PierreFrancoisDuPlessis
Brazil Police chase two suspects into a favela holding a party in Sao Paulo, resulting in a stampede that killed nine people.
Lt. Col. Emerson Massera, a Sao Paulo police spokesman, said the unit of 38 military police officers was patrolling in the Paraisopolis slum, south of the city, on the morning of December 1, two men drove. The machine gun fired at them.
Members of the Brazilian military police special unit patrol the slums in Rio de Janeiro in April Photo: AFP
When chased, the two of them drove to where the street party was in the slums, continued shooting at the police and led to chaos.
Massera said 5,000 people gathered in the area to organize a "funk party", a popular weekend street party in the poor districts of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. When everyone at the party fled, a trampling scene caused 9 deaths, including a woman, 7 men, a 14-year-old boy, and two people were injured.
The mother of the 17-year-old girl who was injured in the incident said police were the party that triggered the trampling after blocking a street, firing tear gas and rubber bullets at them.
"A police officer attacked my daughter with a glass bottle. I could no longer recognize my daughter with a deformed face and a lot of blood," the woman said.
Globo TV broadcast a video showing a person being kicked by police. The Paraisopolis Neighborhood Association has denounced police action. "Young people have been driven into alleys and killed. We demand justice," the association said in a statement on social media.
However, police spokesman Emiliano da Silva Neto said the party attendees covered crime and illegal drug use. When police chased the two shooters to where the party was taking place, they were stoned to the ground, forcing functional forces to fire tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades in response.
Sao Paulo authorities say all the dead were trampled, and no one was shot. The Brazilian military police is investigating the incident.
Paraisopolis is one of the largest slums in Sao Paulo with 50,000 residents. Many of them live in ramshackle houses along unpaved roads, lacking basic services. Locals see the "funk party" as a "spiritual liberation" for young people in this area on weekends.
