Judge Juliana Grillo El-Jaick, of the 4th Jury Court of São Gonçalo, in the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro, maintained the preventive detention of Navy Sergeant Aurélio Alves Bezerra, arrested since February of this year, accused of death neighbor Durval Teófilo Filho, 38 years old. The request for the revocation of the arrest was presented by Aurélio’s defense, in an instruction and trial hearing held this Monday (4). Durval was killed in February in front of the condominium where he lived, in São Gonçalo, shot by two of the three shots fired by Aurélio, as he was returning home from work.
Aurélio told the audience that “he mistook Durval for a robber and would have shot him from inside the car when he [a vítima] He put his hand on his backpack, which was in front of his chest, to get something”.
Eleven witnesses for the prosecution and defense were heard at the instruction and trial hearing. Durval’s widow, Luziane Teófilo, and assistant to the prosecution, said that she heard the shots and then checked what had happened through the condominium’s internal circuit cameras, via her cell phone. However, she didn’t know it was her husband. A little later, she said she heard Aurélio say “man, I did a shit”, in a conversation below her house.
As the daughter had seen that Durval had already left the van and was walking home, Luziane imagined that her husband would take a while to arrive because he would be with the other neighbors helping to help the person shot on the sidewalk. “It wasn’t until a neighbor knocked on her house holding Durval’s bloodstained backpack and slipper that she knew what had happened. According to the widow, he arrived dead at the hospital and Aurélio did not approach or try to talk to her”.
Three residents of the condominium, who testified as witnesses for the prosecution, stated that they never knew of any robbery in front of the condominium.