Brazilians have expressed outrage over the death of a mentally ill black man who was bundled into the back of a police car by officers who then detonated a gas grenade inside.
On Wednesday, Genivaldo de Jesus Santos, 38, was stopped by federal highway police in the city of Umbaúba. Two officers in helmets are seen holding the car boot closed on his thrashing legs as clouds of gas billow out of the vehicle.
“They’re going to kill the guy,” an onlooker can be heard saying as Santos’ legs stop moving.
Santos died of asphyxiation, according to an autopsy report released on Thursday. Santos, according to his family, suffered from schizophrenia and was medicated for it.
Read more: Two Years After The Murder Of George Floyd, American Police Still Treat Black People The Same Way
Santos’ nephew, Alisson de Jesus, who witnessed the incident, said he warned the police that the man was unwell before they used a teargas grenade. “It was a torture session,” he told the local press.
In Brazil, where lethal police violence is common and disproportionately affects the country’s Black population, the horrific death has caused shock. According to the Brazilian Forum of Public Security, police in Brazil will kill 6,416 people in 2020. Almost all of the victims were black.
Renata Souza, a Black activist and politician from Rio de Janeiro, wrote on Twitter, “Police officers turned a car into a gas chamber and executed a mentally ill man,” “There are no words in the face of such inhumanity. Brazil is an extermination camp!”
Federal highway police in the state of Sergipe said in a statement that after Santos became aggressive, they used “immobilization techniques” and “instruments of minor offensive potential.” According to the statement, Santos was taken to the hospital after becoming ill on his way to the police station.
Santos was already dead when he arrived at the hospital, according to his family.
Santos was killed just one day after 26 people were killed during a police raid in Rio de Janeiro’s Vila Cruzeiro favela, the city’s second-deadliest police operation on record. In such cases, police officers are rarely held accountable, but there have been widespread calls for the officers in the video to be investigated.
“These two pieces of vermin know they are being filmed and yet they still applied a death sentence. There is no more decency or embarrassment. They tortured and executed the guy,” tweeted Douglas Belchior, a member of the civil rights organization Coalition for Black Rights.
“How do you get on with your day [after that]? Mine will be terrible, thinking that me or one of my friends could be the next ones,” he stated.
The federal police said they would look into Santos’ death.
Santos was laid to rest on Thursday morning. Locals in Umbaúba protested before his funeral, setting fire to car tyres on the road where he was killed and demanding justice, according to news site G1.
“This was a crime. They acted with cruelty to kill him,” Santos’ widow, Maria Fabiana dos Santos, told reporters.
