The details of a recent lynching of a man accused of theft have caused unusual shock in Brazil. The brutal incident has managed to break the apathy that usually surrounds these cases and make the news because it happened in one of the most touristy places in the country, the upscale neighborhood of Copacabana, home to the famous Carioca beach. And the victim is white. Two security guards and two fast food delivery workers beat Cláudio Rafael Landeiro, 37 years old and of a reserved character, to death. They accused him of stealing a bicycle that had actually been lent to him by his younger sister. The case, which occurred on the 11th, came to light after the family filed a complaint. The four alleged attackers have been arrested, held in preventive detention, and charged with murder.
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On Tuesday the 11th, Landeiro went out at half past ten at night for a ride around Copacabana on his sister’s bike. The reconstruction carried out by the Civil Police with footage from street cameras and witness interrogations indicates that Landeiro stopped at a convenience store looking for a cigarette. Since he had no money, they didn’t give him one. It was there, at the store’s door, that a private security guard approached him and asked if the bicycle was his. Landeiro replied no, without saying more. That’s where the interaction between the two began, with the other suspects joining in.
The assault, in broad daylight, ended “in a lynching session that lasted nine minutes,” explained the Civil Police commissioner from Rio who is leading the investigation on the program Fantástico. The security guards used sticks, like baseball bats, while the delivery workers punched and kicked him. The victim received 63 blows in those nine minutes.
Abandoned on the sidewalk, Landeiro agonized for half an hour without anyone helping him until the firefighters arrived. The police indicate that there may be new arrests, accused of failure to provide assistance. The victim died in the hospital due to severe injuries. The street security camera footage shows how the first guard viciously kicks him in the face and leaves the scene laughing. The other guard says to him: “Are you going to keep laughing? Are you aware of what you have done?”
That a mob takes violence into its own hands is not unusual in Brazil, nor in other countries in the region. Every so often, a case appears in the Brazilian press, but it usually happens in peripheral neighborhoods, in remote cities, and the incident soon fades away. The Security Observatories network recorded 88 cases in Brazil during the first five months of this year; last year there were 227 and the year before, 223, according to the network’s report published by the digital Carta Capital. These figures, which include completed assaults and attempts, refer to only nine of Brazil’s 27 states, those monitored by the network, including the two most populous, São Paulo and Rio.
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The victim’s sister, and owner of the bike, explained to the local press that it took the family several days to understand what had happened. Only when they obtained the death certificate did they grasp the magnitude of the event, the brutality and cruelty with which those strangers killed him.
The footage of the case shows how the news that some guards have located a supposed thief reaches a point in Copacabana where delivery workers usually gather while waiting for orders. Two of them join the hunt and, once the prey is located, they beat him without taking off their red backpacks. The CEO of IFood in Brazil published an article expressing his condolences to the victim’s family, condemning the crime, and stating that the company collaborated with the police from the start to identify the two delivery workers, who have already been expelled from the platform. The executive recalls that there are 600,000 delivery workers in Brazil.
The police investigation indicates that, after the lynching was completed and Landeiro was left on the sidewalk, one of the guards took the bike and one of the delivery workers made three deliveries that same night after participating in the fatal beating.