The death toll resulting from heavy rainfall across Brazil’s northwestern Pernambuco state in the last week has reached 107, with 11 remain missing, according to officials.
More than 6,650 people are displaced due to the rainfall, which has caused massive flooding and landslides that destroyed a number of houses which led to the majority of deaths in the capital city of Recife and its metropolitan region according to Xinhua news agency, quoting officials who said.
The death toll is the second-worst disaster in the history of Pernambuco, following the flooding of May 1966, which resulted in the death of 175 people.
Firefighters as well as the Brazilian Army were focused on locating the bodies of missing persons with the aid of specially well-trained rescue dogs.
There are as many as 24, Pernambuco municipalities have declared a states of emergency. The federal government has said it will allocate around $200 million to help rebuild the areas affected by the crisis.
The storm also brought down in the state in Sergipe, Paraiba, Rio Grande do Norte and Alagoas in which three people died and more than 18,000 people were forced to leave the state.
Video footage of an unsarmed Black man from Brazil suffering from gas poisoning inside the back of a police vehicle following being stopped by highway police has provoked fury across Brazil and across the world.
Images from the police checkpoint at the end of Tuesday’s day in Umbauba in the state of Sergipe The officers are seen holding Genivaldo De Jesus Santos on the ground before placing him in the back of their police car as a dense puff of white smoke rises out of the SUV.
The 38-year-old man who was handcuffed – identified by his family as having schizophrenia be heard screaming. legs, which protrude out of the car, kick repeatedly before they cease to move. The officers aren’t bothered by any of the observers around them.
Social media went into a frenzy over photos that were taken with phones cameras. A large number of people on Wednesday rallied to protest in Umbauba which was where they sat on the road, burned tires and hurled signs demanding justice.
“The public is in a state of shock,” a man can be heard saying in the video of the protest shared on Twitter. “They murdered the guy!” another told the crowd through a loudspeaker.According to the victim’s family, Santos was approached by the officers while riding his motorcycle through the area. He was frightened when officers discovered his schizophrenia medication in his pocket. Wallyson de Jesus, a nephew of Santos’s, said on the that news site G1.
“They dropped a type of gas into the trunk, and then went into the station but my uncle was still unconscious. They brought his body to the hospital however it was far too late” told de Jesus.
In an announcement, the Federal Highway Police said the man displayed aggressive behavior and was “actively refusing to cooperate with” those who stopped him. The police officers put him in a coma in the statement and then employed “instruments that had less potential for offensiveness” to restrain the man.
The report states that Santos became ill while his vehicle was transported to a police station and was admitted to a hospital in which the cause of death confirmed.It was not mentioned the two police officers who shackled him in the rear of their vehicle while white gas was observed being released, but did say it was the Federal Highway Police had opened an investigation to investigate the police’s conduct.
An autopsy conducted by a preliminary team concluded that the victim died from respiratory failure caused by “mechanical asphyxia”, George Fernandes, an official of Sergipe the state’s forensic institute said to The Associated Press news agency.
“This obstruction can be caused by many factors, and at the time of this report, it was difficult to pinpoint the primary cause of the asphyxia and how it happened,” said the institute’s report, as reported by Reuters media agency.
The forensic institute has to provide their final report, which is more detailed report to the federal police within 10 working days.
This incident “shocked Brazilian society due to the brutality of the act and exposed the institution’s lack of preparation to ensure that its employees follow the basic rules” according to the Brazilian Public Security Forum, an independent organization, said in the statement.
President Jair Bolsonaro announced that he would learn via authorities at the Federal Highway Police what happened. Bolsonaro also spoke of a separate incident that occurred two weeks ago, when the shooter was two highway policemen.
The incident occurred just a few days after police officers of the highway police took part during an incident within Rio de Janeiro that left more than 20 dead.
Police have stated that they were forced to resort to lethal force, but reports of residents that have been published in local newspapers have cast doubt on that assertion.
