Rio: Justice condemns PM for the death of 4 young people on the way out of a party

The Jury Court of Duque de Caxias, in Baixada Fluminense, sentenced the Major of the Military Police of the state of Rio de Janeiro, Ronald Paulo Alves Pereira, to 76 years and eight months in prison for the death of four young people, in 2003, in the crime which became known as the massacre of the via show. The youths were leaving the concert hall in São João de Meriti when they were kidnapped and executed by military police.

Ronald was arrested in 2019 in the Intocáveis ​​operation, by the Special Action Group to Combat Organized Crime (Gaeco, of the Public Ministry of Rio), launched against the main militia that controlled the communities of Rio das Pedras, Muzema and other areas, in Jacarepaguá , west side of Rio.

According to the investigations, on December 5, 2003, Geraldo Sant’Anna de Azevedo Junior, then 21 years old, was leaving the Via Show venue when he was accused of trying to steal the vehicle of one of the show’s security staff. . From then on, he began to be beaten by several security guards, all of them military police officers.

Brothers Rafael Paulino, 18, and Renan Medina Paulino, 13, and their cousin, Bruno Muniz Paulino, 20, all friends of Geraldo, were also beaten by security when they tried to intervene. After the assaults, the security guards contacted Ronald who, along with the aggressors, took the youths to an abandoned farm in the Imbariê neighborhood, also in Baixada, where they were brutally executed, the bodies being hidden inside an artesian well on the site. .

In view of what was decided by the Sentencing Council, the judgment of the 4th Criminal Court of Duque de Caxias upheld the accusation, condemning Ronald Pereira for the four double-qualified homicides. He was also convicted of hiding Geraldo’s body.

Ronald is imprisoned, with preventive detention decreed, in the federal prison of Mossoró, in Rio Grande do Norte.