Brazil military shoots family driving to baby shower: report

Five people were inside the vehicle, including a seven-year-old boy, who was unhurt.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - Brazilian soldiers opened fire on a family driving to a baby shower in Rio de Janeiro, riddling the vehicle with more than 80 bullets and killing one of the occupants, reports said Monday.

At least two others were wounded in Sunday’s attack, including a passerby, after the military apparently mistook the white car as belonging to criminals, Globo TV reported, citing police.

Five people were inside the vehicle, including a seven-year-old boy, who was unhurt.

Police have launched an investigation into the incident in the city’s northern district of Guadalupe, homicide police spokesman Leonardo Salgado told G1.

"Everything indicates that the military really confused the vehicle for a vehicle of robbers," Salgado said.

No weapons were found in the car that belonged to "a normal family who ended up being victims of the military," he added.

"I don’t see a legitimate defense for the number of shots."

A spokesman for the military would not comment on the details of the incident, but said personnel involved were being interviewed along with civilian witnesses.

The military’s central role in Rio de Janeiro state security officially ended on December 31.

Former President Michel Temer took the drastic step of placing Rio security in the hands of the military, citing the police force’s inability to control heavily armed drug gangs.

Army patrols had already been used in the impoverished favelas but the military intervention saw generals replace civilian authorities in top security jobs, as well as an increase in the use of soldiers to back up police.

The intervention was unheard of since the country’s return to democracy in 1985 after 21 years of military rule.

But new state governor Wilson Witzel has promised to take a hard line against drug traffickers and recently told local media that snipers had been deployed in the city.

In Witzel’s first two months in office, 305 people were killed by police, according to government statistics, or one such death every four and a half hours.

That is a 17.6 percent increase compared to the same period in 2018, and a record high for the 16 years that statistics on police-involved killings have been kept.