Lynching of a man accused of stealing a bicycle in Copacabana shocks Brazil
Two security guards and two delivery workers jailed after fatal beating in upscale Rio neighborhood
Details of a recent lynching of a man accused of theft have caused unusual shock in Brazil. The brutal incident broke through the usual apathy surrounding such cases and made national news because it happened in one of the country’s most famous tourist neighborhoods, the upscale Copacabana, home to the famous Carioca beach. And the victim was white. Two security guards and two food delivery workers beat Cláudio Rafael Landeiro, 37, a man of reportedly reserved character, to death. They accused him of stealing a bicycle that his younger sister had actually lent him. The case, which occurred on August 11, came to light after the family filed a complaint. The four alleged attackers have been arrested, held in preventive detention, and charged with murder.
On August 11, Landeiro went out at 10.30 p.m. for a ride around Copacabana on his sister’s bike. The reconstruction carried out by the Civil Police using footage from street cameras and witness interviews indicates that Landeiro stopped at a corner store to buy a cigarette. As he had no money, he was refused by staff. It was there, at the shop’s doorway, that a private security guard approached him and asked whether the bicycle was his. Landeiro replied no, without any further explanation. That’s where the interaction between the two begins, and the other suspects gradually join in.
The attack, in the middle of the street, culminated “in a lynching session that lasted nine minutes,” the Civil Police commissioner in Rio leading the investigation told the news 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.
Left on the sidewalk, Landeiro writhed for half an hour without anyone helping him until firefighters arrived. Police say more arrests are possible, of people accused of failing to assist. The victim died in hospital from his severe wounds. Street security-camera footage shows the first guard kicking him savagely in the face and leaving the scene laughing. The other guard says to him: “Are you going to keep laughing? Do you realize what you’ve done?”
It is not unusual in Brazil for a mob to take the law into its own hands, nor in other countries in the region. From time to time a case appears in the Brazilian press, but it usually happens in peripheral neighborhoods, in remote towns, and the incident soon fades. The Network of Security Observatories recorded 88 cases in Brazil during the first five months of this year; last year they totaled 227 and the year before, 223, according to the network’s tally published by the digital outlet Carta Capital. These figures, which include attacks and attempted attacks, refer to only nine of Brazil’s 27 states — the ones the network monitors — including the two most populous, São Paulo and Rio.
The victim’s sister, and the owner of the bike, told 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 incident, and the brutality and malice with which those strangers killed Landeiro.
Footage of the incident shows how news that security guards had located a suspected thief reached a spot in Copacabana where delivery workers usually gather while waiting for orders. Two of them joined the hunt and, once the target was found, beat him without removing their red backpacks. IFood’s executive director in Brazil published an article expressing condolences to the victim’s family, condemning the crime and saying the company cooperated with police from the start to identify the two delivery workers, who have already been expelled from the platform. The executive reminded readers that Brazil has 600,000 delivery workers.
Police investigations indicate that, after the lynching was carried out and Landeiro was left on the sidewalk, one of the guards took the bicycle and one of the delivery workers handed over three orders that same night after participating in the fatal beating.
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