"My name is Luciana." "I've been on the streets for 19 years." "I hit the streets when I was five." "Do you want to know why?" "I was beaten up by my stepfather and my mother." "Before I hit the streets, I led a decent life." "But my dad was an alcoholic." "When he drank he beat my mother." "So she left and hit the streets." "Can I talk about my dreams?" "My dreams of happiness?" "Happiness..." "I don't think I can be happy." "I don't have mother or father." "I only have my kids." "There's no way I'll ever know happiness." "It's a cold floor." "No comfort." "We sleep under a shelter." "The rich kids sleep up there, on a nice bed." "We sleep down here, on the floor." "When we wake up, there's no breakfast." "We go to the bakery and beg for food." "Sometimes we steal, 'cause there's nothing to eat." "So when we grow up, we're enraged." "Mancha hit the streets when he was a kid." "No one ever cared for him." "The only thing he learned was how to survive." "That's something we all learned, how to survive on our own." "If you are a street kid, and don't make an effort, no one will give you food." "So you learn how to get by." "I was informed via the squad radio that the Special Forces were being deployed in a hostage situation at Jardim Botanico." "I immediately called the unit commander and offered to go there immediately and evaluate the situation." "The commander gave the order." "I was at the Rio-Niteroi bridge." "I headed for the Jardim Botanico." "I was first on the scene." "The first live images on TV were from traffic cameras." "They showed a bus surrounded by the police." "It seemed that a mugger was holding the passengers hostage." "Right away, the newspaper sent almost all its reporters there." "BUS 174" "As soon as I got there, I reported to Col. Soares, who assigned the operation to me." "I was trained to deal with hostage-takers." "I tried to collect information to brief the team that would be arriving." "Following procedure, I tried to establish contact with the hijacker." "I wanted to determine his motives, find out who were we dealing with." "I gave him a name." "I said I was gonna call him Sergio." "He said: "OK." "You can call me Sergio."" "At that point, no one knew he was called Sandro." "THE HIJACKER" "Sandro was only 6 years old when his mother was murdered in front of him in a shack in the Rato Molhado favela." "The boy saw everything." "He didn't have a father." "Grandparents?" "No such thing." "So he was on his own." "He had nobody to look after him." "So he hit the streets." "He went to Meyer." "In Meyer, he met other street kids." "They formed a small gang and went to Copacabana." "There's money and food there." "They go hungry less often." "It's harder to beg in the suburbs." "Here, tourists give you money and food." "That's how it started." "He went from a family tragedy to being in a gang of street kids." "When I first met Sandro, he was a young kid, just like these." "He was in Copacabana, just like they are." "When I came to Copacabana I was the same age." "I said: "Sandro, where did you come from?"" ""I came from home." "What?"" ""I have no where to sleep and I'm hungry."" "When they hit the streets, they are quite naive." "They don't know how to steal, don't smoke pot or sniff glue." "First they try restaurants for food." ""Mate, I can't cover for you." "You gotta do something!"" ""Can't rely on me." They see how you get money." ""Come with me." "We're going mugging."" "That's how it happens." "They become adults pretty fast." "It happens to lots of them." "The so-called "street kids"" "are kids who lost all contact with their families, with anyone they knew, their friends, and neighbourhood." "They choose to forget their past." "They have no past." "Their reality is a street corner and their gang of friends." "Call a cab, let him go." "Sometimes, when the police arrive, the criminal decides to take hostages." "It's an interrupted robbery." "There are philosophical arguments over this." "Some policemen think that one should let the criminal escape to avoid risking innocent lives, to avoid a hostage situation." "THE POLICE" "People who join the police in Rio today are those who haven't been able to get a regular job." "They've usually been unemployed for a long time and had no choice but to become a policeman." "It's a job." "The police are poorly armed, poorly trained and lack self-esteem." "They don't really understand the nature of the job." "They think their duty is to arrest and kill criminals." "Special Squad are more professional than the police." "A Special Squad officer is well-trained in hostage situations, law enforcement in the favela environment and in mediating conflicts." "He is selected through psychological and physical profiling." "My assessment was that it was just another incident where the hijacker would turn himself in." "Because the hijacker's position was very unsafe." "He was in a bus, with windows on every side." "He didn't stand a chance of getting out alive or having his demands met." "Special Squad had never lost a hostage." "We were approaching the Elevado." "We were in a traffic jam when a Special Squad vehicle raced by, so we followed it and got to the scene very quickly." "The situation escalated and he knew that there were a lot of people against him." "All those people around the bus, they were worried about us, the hostages, not about him." "It was him against everybody." "HOSTAGES" "Right at the beginning, when he was holding the first or the second hostage," "I heard him say: "I have four bullets."" "One for him, one for her, and the last ones for you and me." "I was crouching down and he didn't know I was there." "So I managed to make several phone calls to my home, to my boyfriend and to my job." "It's surreal, but I thought the incident would soon be over." "So I said:" ""Look, tell the boss that I'll be late."" ""Tell her not to worry, I'm in a hold-up."" "I hadn't realized it was a hijacking, that I was a hostage in that bus." "To me it was just an incident." "I thought he'd been caught with a gun and just wanted out." "I didn't realize he wanted to keep us until his demands were granted." "I didn't think of it that way." "He took my jacket to hide his face and started taking everything out of my bag." "He took a towel and wrapped it around his face." "At one point, he took me to the driver's seat." "He made me sit on his lap and told me to drive." "He wanted to get out of there." "He kept threatening me, saying:" ""Tell them I want this, I want that."" ""Tell them or else I shoot you." "If you don't tell them, I'll shoot you."" "He said he didn't want cameramen or photographers around." "He yelled to the police:" ""Get him out of there!"" "There was a photographer right in front on the bus." "The police were focused on resolving the situation, on getting Sandro out of there, killing him... ending the situation." "They were trying to do that, but they forgot to isolate the area." "Very few policemen were taking control of the area." "Nothing prevented us from approaching the bus." "Reporters were getting closer and closer, trying to obtain better information and better images." "The crowd was right there, near the bus." "If this guy was really violent, he would not only shoot the hostages, he would have shot people randomly." "Just like an American cop movie." "He said: "Aren't you gonna tell that guy to move?" ""Tell him to get out of there!"" "Dozens of lives were in danger." "If he'd fired towards the front of bus, we would have been hit." "THE COMMANDER" "Col. Penteado was informed that the hijacker was armed, the hammer was cocked, his finger was on the trigger, and he had already fired a shot." "We briefed him and he started taking decisions straight way." "He became the operation's commander." "The cordon, which hadn't been created properly, was strengthened." "We positioned ourselves in front of Sandro and to the right of the bus." "Snipers were positioned in the park." "The perimeter was covered and the situation was under control." "The commander took measures to bring the situation under control." "He was totally out of control." "He said he was going to kill us all." "He kept saying that all his family was dead." "They were dead, he had nothing to lose." "That scared me." "He sang dreadful songs that made me feel very nervous." "His behaviour suggested to me that he was high on drugs." "I was frightened." "Very frightened." "I didn't evaluate him psychologically." "That wasn't my intention." "I wasn't considering whether his behaviour was psychotic, schizophrenic or that of a drug addict." "I didn't take that into account." "I really didn't." "If he was a street kid, if the police had known that before the negotiations, they would have taken into account his personality as a street kid." "They would have realized that he could be unpredictable." "This Sandro is a symbol, a paradigm, an example of our "invisible kids"." "The invisible kids eventually emerge and take centre stage, and confront us with their violence, which is nothing but a desperate and impotent cry for help." "We have not dealt with our problems:" "social exclusion, racism, and other kinds of prejudices." "People get used to coexisting with the Sandros, with the sons and daughters of family tragedies." "This has become part of our daily lives." "The children's greatest battle is against invisibility." "We are nothing until someone recognizes our value validates our existence, tells us we are worthy." "Until someone reflects our image back, gives us some recognition." "These children are starved of a social existence, starved of recognition." "There is another side to this invisibility." "Any black kid, a poor kid..." "These kids move around the streets of all Brazilian cities, invisible." "He is socially invisible." "This invisibility happens in two different ways." "The child is invisible because his presence is ignored, he's looked down on, or because we stigmatise him, and see only a caricature." "When we project our prejudices onto someone, we cancel out, we destroy the individuality which makes that person unique." "We only see what we project onto him, a caricature, our own prejudices." "They consider us criminals, but we're not!" "We're just trying to make a living." "Nobody's trying to fuck anybody over." "We don't want to steal, be shot at and end up dead." "We are just trying to make a living, but we always get fucked over." "We would like society to see us differently." "Because if society keeps seeing us like that, we don't stand a chance." "If they gave us an opportunity, I'm sure we'd make it." "Lots of street kids dream of having a future." "Not everyone is a criminal." "Not everyone is a drug-dealer." "There are lots of victims on the streets." "They come...." "I sell sweets on the street." "They kick my merchandise, call me names." ""Criminal!" "You bloody criminal!"" "So I'm forced to make a scene, yell that I am a street vendor." "I have my merchandise to prove I'm not a criminal!" "I'm a street vendor and they treat me like that." "Nobody gives us a chance." "They just ignore us." "If things carry on like this, it will only get worse." "It won't get any better." "Actually, it didn't look like he had a plan." "We thought he was a common criminal, interrupted during a robbery." "He didn't make any demands." "He didn't say: "I want a helicopter." Which was a good sign." "We were dealing with someone who didn't want anything." "But I surely did." "I constantly told him, and everyone else there, that he would have to free the hostages." "That's all." "He said: "What about you?" I was carrying a rucksack." "He said: "Are you a student?" "Yes, I'm a student."" ""Then you should go." "You must be late."" ""Get over there, open the door, and close it from the outside."" "And I said: "OK."" "From the moment he let a hostage go, I felt more confident." "Then I started to use different methods, techniques, to persuade him to change his mind about the hostages." "Then he let me go." "He grabbed Janaina and made us empty our purses." "He took a lipstick out of one of the bags." "He handed it to me and said:" ""Come over here." "Come and write on the windscreen."" "I don't know what came into my head," "I wanted everybody outside to be able to read." "I had the presence of mind to think:" ""Write backwards."" "It's easy to do if you're fooling around, but at gunpoint it is not easy." "HE IS GOING TO KILL EVERYBODY" "He was acting violently because of the cameras." "He was thinking about how he was coming across." "He was putting on a little show." "AT SIX O'CLOCK" "I had the impression that the whole world was watching us." "That it was all aired on TV." "I think that all those cameras made him feel powerful." "He knew he was being filmed and he wanted to be filmed." "He played it and he played it well." "But he knew what would happen if he got caught." "He knew that the TV was actually protecting him." "The media's presence makes the hijacker confident." "It's obvious." "It's a guarantee that he won't be shot dead." "Making the incident last longer was his way of conveying a message." "It allowed him to show he was powerful, that he was somebody." "That was as important to him as getting out of there alive." "In that sense, the TV cameras mattered to him." "Sandro got us all in front of the TV." "He imposed his visibility." "He was the main character of a new narrative." "He redefined the social narrative." "The story which had always placed him in a subordinate position turned into a tale where he had the leading role." "I wanted to understand why he was doing it." "A boy with a gun can make us feel something." "He can make us feel fear." "A negative feeling, but a feeling." "Through it, he regains his visibility, he reaffirms his social existence, his human existence." "It is a process of self-creation." "A process of self-invention through violence, through a gun." "It's a perverse pact, a sort of Faustian pact." "The boy swaps his future, his life, his soul, for an ephemeral moment of glory." "The small glory of being acknowledged, valued, of feeling self-confident." "This is a crucial moment." "It is at the centre of the problem." "If we can't understand its depth and complexity, we will never learn how to deal with it." "HE IS CRAZY" "HE IS GOING TO KILL ME" "Check this out!" "The same way you are mean, I'm not fucking around either." "I don't give a shit about the police here." "Some serious shit is gonna go down." "Stare at my face." "You bet it is a crime." "It's serious shit!" "I'll blow her head off if I don't get a grenade." "I'll put the heat on." "Just wait and see." "At six o'clock, she dies." "The whole country can watch." "I'm gonna put the heat on." "15 years ago, they tore my mother's head off." "I've got nothing to lose." "I'll put on the heat." "Just wait and see." "She'll be the first to die." "Hear what I say?" "You don't scare me." "I don't give a shit." "This is no action movie." "This is serious shit, man." "It's no use in terrorising me." "This is serious." "Didn't you terrorise me when you could?" "Didn't you slaughter those people in Vigario?" "Didn't you kill my friends in Candelaria?" "I was there." "You weren't there?" "Ask Aunt Yvonne." "This is what happened in Candelaria." "There was a group of kids who slept in the square, under a shelter just in front of the church." "Sandro was one of them." "I always called him Sandro." ""Mancha" was a nickname, because he had a birthmark." "From here to there is where the kids made their beds with cardboards and blankets." "They left everything set up." "This is where we would all gather together to chat and tell our stories." "We would go down to Bob's and buy those combos with fries, fizzy drinks and ice creams." "We'd come back there and lay the food on the ground, on some cardboard." "We'd open the bags and everybody would help themselves." "We'd eat the fries and the burger." "We always left the ice cream last." "We would share out spoonfuls of ice cream." "When we were full, we'd chuck food at each other." "It was cool." "We felt like rich kids." "Sometimes when Sandro was sad, he'd climb up on top of the newsstand." "He would stay there." "We'd say: "What are you thinking?"" "He used to say he was just thinking things over." "Then we would tease him and say:" ""Thinking of who to mug?" ""How much money you will make?" We teased him like that." "The beds came up to here." "Many of them preferred to sleep somewhere more hidden." "Because at night, people would come by and throw a stone." "At the time, they were using stones to kill people." "They used paving stones." "They'd wait till you were asleep." "They'd drop the stone on your head and your brains would spill out." "22 JULY 1993" "The birthday one of the volunteers who looked after the children at Candelaria." "The Candelaria group started out small but it suddenly became crowded with children from the area, the Rato Molhado favela." "Sandro was still the same as ever." "He was introverted and he had learning difficulties." "He would always tell me his mother's story." "That she was murdered in front of him." "He never knew who his father was." "Never met him." "What do you think about the way you live?" "I reckon it's better than living with my folks." " We never got along." " Where did you live?" "I used to live in Vigario Geral." "I left home after fighting with my dad." "Mancha... he was a cool guy." "I just told you how I hit the streets." "It was similar for him." "Maybe he didn't have a family." "He never told us if he had a mother." "He said that he didn't have a family." "He had nothing." "So that was the only way he knew how to survive." "I'm 17 and I've been living on the streets since I was 8 years old." "I stick around this area, and mostly I hang out at Maua Square, but lately I'm living here with these guys." "When we met, I think I was 16 and he was 13." "We met through living in the same area, sleeping in the same place." "So we became friends." "We'd sniff glue together." "Mancha did a lot of mugging at traffic lights, you know?" "He did a lot of mugging at traffic lights to buy cocaine." "To survive, to buy his glue, his food, his clothes." "He did a lot of different drugs." "When he was stoned, he would mug." "That was it." "We all did the same thing." " What would make you happy?" " A house, a home..." "Food, everything." "A blanket." "A proper house to live in." "Tell us how your life is, Rogerinho." "I already did." "My life here is..." "Tell us about your daily life, where you sleep." "I sleep down there." "I take a bath over there." "I play football on that street." "I pray in this church, I hang around here, I see everything that goes on." "I see the cops beat us up over there." "I see everything." "You don't have to see that, you can feel it!" "What did you say about the police?" "They hit us, they beat us, and tell us to get out." " Uniformed officers?" " Yeah." "NEXT DAY" "A friend of ours was being beaten up by the cops." "We didn't like that." "There was a big group of us." "It was a kind of rebellion." "A protest." "We fought with the police officers." "Then some of them threatened us." "They said they'd come back later." "We didn't take them seriously." "Who would think that, in the centre of the town, there'd be a massacre of so many children ?" "So we stayed." "When it was around midnight, around that time, two cars stopped." "Since it was a weekend, we thought it was the soup ladies who used to bring us soup at night." "We thought it was them." "Everyone walked towards the car to get the soup." "One guy came out shooting from behind the newsstand and the others came out of the cars shooting at us." "All I could see was my friends lying on the ground, bleeding, dying." "Hey, you!" "Go ahead!" "Check it out, Brazil!" "I was at Candelaria." "This is serious shit." "They murdered my friends." "I have nothing to lose." "I'll put the heat on." "Just you wait and see." "There were seven victims at Candelaria." "62 kids remained." "I recently concluded a study on the fate of these kids." "39 were murdered, some disappeared, and some still live in dire conditions." "I recall that a radio station did a survey and most of the people said it was a good thing." "That we should kill them and clean the city." "DECEMBER 1993" "Afterwards, he hung out in different streets." "The kids spread out all over town." "Many started working for dealers." "And were killed because of it." "I didn't see him for quite a while." "Mancha, the gang and I used to sleep under a bridge when it was cold." "It was near a theatre where they showed children's plays." ""COELHO" FORMER STREET KID" "There was a group of kids who slept in the botanical gardens." "One day I walked by and invited them to come to the university and study capoeira." "They started going to the university and stayed with me for two years." "They never stole anything from my office." "There was always money lying around." "They were always in my office, but never took anything." "They got used to that life." "They behaved like normal kids who liked to hang in trendy places." "They would go to the same beaches as everyone else." "CAPOEIRA BAPTISM AT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY" "Everybody knew him as "Sandrinho from Candelaria"." "That episode had traumatised him." "They were very scared of dying." "They always talked about death." "They talked a lot about it." "At the time, they used to shoot street kids when they were asleep." "It was something that disturbed them at the time." "Candelaria was still fresh in their memories." "What screwed up Mancha was sniffing glue." "I used to tell him: "Stop that, mate."" ""Forget it." "This is what I do." "But I want to get fit."" ""But I want to fight capoeira and be fit like you."" "I said: "Fine." "Let's start exercising."" "BAPTISED AS "ALEX MANCHA"" "He was the quietest in the group and the first to disappear." "It's that shit, mate." "The fucking glue." "The same way it fucked him up, it damages loads of other street kids." "Sandro was always high on coke." "He loved it." "He mugged so he could snort." "Sandro didn't care about trendy clothes." "The only thing he cared about was cocaine." "He'd stay high for two days on a binge." "To do what he did, he must have been very high." "He must have been awake doing coke or something for three days non-stop." "But he was also frightened." "He looked scared in the bus." "That was the problem." "He was alert because of the coke high." "But he was scared at the same time." "The Candelaria tragedy hadn't been resolved and we were already living another tragedy, which was an extension of the first one." "Sandro, a victim of Candelaria, was the perpetrator of Bus 174." "As if to alert us to the fact that we need to resolve a more pressing issue." "An issue bigger than Candelaria and Bus 174." "Bigger than all of our everyday tragedies." "Check this out." "Soon it will be six." "You want to see it, don't you?" "I'll blow her head off." "The invisibility comes on top of the natural problems of adolescence." "So we can imagine how difficult this child's journey must have been, his life in this city as an invisible being." "Our society treats them not as human beings, but as rubbish." "They are thrown onto the scrapheap and we wash our hands of them completely." "PADRE SEVERIANO INSTITUTE FOR YOUNG OFFENDERS" "A lady driving her car stopped at a traffic light and was surrounded by teenagers who demanded her money." "They threatened to knife her." "They took her watch and her money." "An officer managed to arrest one of them" "Sandro Rosa do Nascimento, 16 years old." "Nothing was found with him." "The sentence." "Considering the youth's confession, Sandro should be sent to a socio-educational correctional facility." "This will provide him with protection, steer him towards a job and re-admittance into society." "State Justice Department," "Social Services and Psychology Department report" "Sandro Rosa do Nascimento, 16, has physical injuries." "He does not live with his family." "The youth lives in the street, mainly in the Southern District." "His mother died several years ago." "He used to live with his Aunt Ju." "Never met his father." "Note The youth resists giving information on his status, stating that he doesn't recall things because he has too many problems." "He won't talk about these problems." "Drug dependency Unknown." "Has used cocaine for two days." "Summary Youth on his fourth term." "Did not serve previous sentences." "Lives in the streets with friends since his mother died four years ago." "His legal guardian was notified on January 12, 1996." "Her name is Aunt Julieta, but he is not sure of her address." "After a month, Sandro started receiving visits from his aunt and his 14 year-old sister who lives with the aunt's family." "Seeing his family again has had a positive effect." "Sandro feels more positive about his future." "According to Sandro, the break-up of his family with the murder of his mother was very traumatic." "It led to him leaving his aunt's house and joining street gangs, where he turned to anti-social behaviour." "Psychological report" "Sandro's behaviour in the facility is totally appropriate, complying with the rules and being cooperative." "I was totally heartbroken when I got there." "I cried." "They even laughed at me." "I worried about those children." "The guards would beat the kids with their batons." "I said: "When these kids get out of this place, they'll be worse."" "They have no support, no one to care for them." "I think that violence..." "The world is already a violent place." "Lock kids in a prison and mistreat them, they'll come out worse." "Padre Severiano is a dump for human beings." "Do you know what I mean?" "I was his aunt and I couldn't get him out." "He was in State custody." "I've been sent to Padre Severiano 20 times or more." "What did I ever learn in there?" "Nothing." "All I got was more and more enraged." "The staff there just beat us, you see?" "They taught us nothing." "They beat us with chains." "I was 13 when I was sent to Padre Severiano, in 1994." "I was arrested in a robbery in Humaita." "When I was a street kid, I smoked pot, sniffed glue, all that." "Mancha and I were in custody in the Joao Alves School, at the Padre Severiano Institute." "Several other kids who grew up with him were there." "He seemed like a regular kid." "Just like the rest of the kids that lived there." "Sometimes we were in custody." "Sometimes we were on the streets." "That's the way it is." "One day you win, the other you lose." "The staff was bribed by some of the young inmates." "Some of the guys in custody are drug-dealers, kidnappers, assassins, and they have money." "I could have lots of money, but I would never show it." "Wear a lot of gold on me." "What for?" "So the cops can jump me?" "When we catch cops, we cut their throats." "Cut their throats, pour petrol on them and set them alight." "Reduce them to ashes." "What?" "Pity?" "If they don't give me the money, I set them on fire." "Just try me." "I turn them into human torches." "You shitting me?" "Remember the job where some friends soaked the old lady in petrol but got caught?" "They all grew up with me." "About Mancha..." "I know the thoughts he had." "He led a similar life to ours." "That bus thing..." "I don't know why he got on the bus." "Maybe he saw someone come out of a bank and get on the bus." "Maybe he wanted to rob the bus." "If he did, that was stupid." "We don't rob buses." "We rob rich people." "He used to say: "Auntie, when the heat's on in one place," "I go someplace else." "When it heats up there, I move on."" ""Auntie, there's going to be a rebellion." "We'll escape."" "I said: "You won't escape." "Stay where you are!"" ""If I don't escape, when they come back, they'll kill me."" "So I went and talked to somebody in charge." "I told this lady that some kids were going to escape, but Sandro would stay." "She said: "I doubt it." But I said: "Sandro won't escape."" "They can't shoot the inmates inside, you see?" "They can't shoot us inside the institution." "They really can't." "So we create havoc." "As many as 200, 300, 500, 800 have escaped at a time." "I escaped once during Carnival, with 400 guys." "The school was empty." "But in a month, it was crowded again, so that you'd have two guys sharing a bed." "Sandro do Nascimento escaped on November 1, 1994." "What was his demand?" "300 dollars?" "What for?" "To get back to the favela, buy some new clothes and that's it?" "300 dollars?" "What for?" "I'd ask for a hand grenade." ""Who in this bus can drive?" "Nobody?"" ""Send up a cop who can drive." "Any of these cocksuckers."" "A hand grenade without the pin." ""Go." "Drive!" I'd like to see him refuse." "I too have children, you see?" "Send any cop to drive the bus." "I'd like to see him refuse." "I'd hold the hand grenade without the pin." "There were more than 10 passengers." "The grenade goes off, everybody dies." "The bus runs on petrol." "If he really wanted a hand grenade and a Uzi he could get it in the favela." "He could buy them in the favela and hit the streets." "It would be better for him, because nobody would shoot him." "He would be holding a grenade." "Who would risk it?" "If the grenade went off, everybody would be killed." "I want two grenades and two 45s, or the one with the heart problem dies and then I shoot her in the face." "THE POLICE'S OPTIONS" "We have four different tactics for resolving hostage situations." "One is negotiation." "Two is the employment of a non-lethal agent." "Number three would be a sniper and number four would be an assault team that could raid the bus." "All these teams have to be synchronized." "They would act as a unit under the command of a single leader." "That would be Col. Penteado." "He would have to be at a Crisis Centre nearby in order to coordinate the teams." "I started noticing the lack of police equipment." "The police would use hand signals to communicate." ""Behind the car!" The police had no radios." "They had to use hand signals and mimicry to communicate from one side of the bus to the other." "There was a lack of resources." "So we had to improvise." "The only way to talk to my colleagues was to go up and talk to them." "What was needed was a communication device capable of linking the entire police force in a network enabling the information to reach the decision-maker." "We didn't have that at the scene." "The state of Rio had bought 2,500 police cars." "For the price of just one of those cars, you could buy all the equipment that Special Squad needed." "Any weaknesses in the police department of a state or country will become obvious in a hostage situation." "Most of our officers had not received any training for more than two years." "The outcome could not be positive." "Unless God wanted otherwise." "We had success in previous situations, but we were approaching chaos." "We had reached our limit." "This was bound to happen." "Geisa was worried about Damiana." "Today we know that Damiana had already suffered a stroke." "I think she mentioned it to us." "Geisa became desperate when she noticed that Damiana was getting worse." "This is my mother." "She has to write everything down because she can't talk due to the problems she had after the incident." "She wrote: "At one point, I couldn't stand the torture any longer." ""I called Sandro and said:" "'Why are you doing this to us?" ""'It's not our fault what you are going through.'" "He said: "Lady, I don't want to kill." "I just want to get out."" ""But if there's no other way, I'll turn the heat on."" "I saw my mother on the bus, her mouth distorted." "Geisa was comforting her." "That's when Geisa started to shiver, in shock." "When she saw my mother's mouth, she panicked." "Hey there, you bunch of heroes!" "One is dying from a heart problem and I'm gonna shoot the other at six." "This ain't no action movie!" "In a very frail voice, she told Geisa:" ""I can't stand it anymore."" "He stuck the gun out of the window." "His whole arm out of the window." "Then his head too." "The elite police outside and he sticks his head out of the window!" "He stuck his arm out and only had a gun." "They could've shot his arm." "He wouldn't be able to kill us unarmed!" "You can't leave six people at someone's mercy when you don't know what he might do." "In that situation, a sniper shot would have been ideal." "But this was being broadcast live to the whole country and the outcome could be that something like half a kilo of his brain would be splattered all over the bus windows." "I wouldn't like to see that." "My family wouldn't like to see that either." "But, technically, that would've been the best thing to do." "When I saw the police in the park my biggest fear was that someone might take a shot." "I believe that if someone had fired at us, he'd have shot me as well." "If a sniper's shot had hit him in the triangular area between his eyes and mouth, the bullet would have hit his nervous system." "He'd have been dead in 7 milliseconds." "He wouldn't even have blinked." "We had men capable of taking this shot." "You don't want to take risks, right?" "I dare you to do something." "Come out, cowards!" "Col. Penteado asked me to take the shot." "He asked me if I could take the shot." "I said I couldn't." "My gun was in the holster and I couldn't shoot him without him noticing my movements." "So he said: "Get over there," ""and get a volunteer to take the shot."" "So that's what I am doing here." "The guy who's giving the thumbs up if I'm not mistaken, is Captain Ricardo Soares." "It's him offering to take the shot." "Col. Penteado favoured that option." "He wanted the shot to be taken." "Some officers told me the governor called." "Others said that the chief of police was in charge of the situation from afar." "Only Col. Penteado knows the truth." "But no one is capable of dealing with such a crisis from a distance." "To me it makes no difference who interfered." "Whoever it was, he made a mistake." "Once he took the first call, probably from the governor, he had to follow orders." "He had to carry out his orders:" ""Spare the kidnapper's life."" "Any laymen in police tactics could point out at least ten opportunities for a clear shot." "Especially us, who are trained for it." ""Sergio, why don't you take us outside to form a circle around you?" ""With a circle of people..." "They won't be able to shoot you." ""Everybody will see." "There are cameras." "He said: "Lady, you don't know what a criminal's life is like." ""I can't ask for the support of the gangs." ""I can't be arrested." "If I am, I'll be killed."" "Then my mother started to talk to Sandro about his life." "He said: "Lady, you know nothing."" "She replied: "I do." "My brother is in prison."" "He said: "Look what they did to my back."" "He showed her what they did to him in prison." "She said: "That thing on your back, my brother has it too." ""My brother is a convict like you." ""He went through everything you went through."" "Geisa asked him to let her leave because her mother was feeling sick." "She called Damiana "mom"." "When he said Damiana could leave," "Geisa followed her, expecting to leave with her." "That is what she wanted to do." ""No." "She's the only one leaving." "You're not going!"" "Then he said: "Let her go." "She's gonna die anyway."" "I heard it because I was right next to him." "Let me go with her!" "She'll collapse." "Let me go." "This is what happened with Damiana." "She gained her freedom by telling him things." "She even said she had a child in prison who was suffering like him." "She said she understood him." "I remember he said:" ""If you have a child in jail, then it's OK."" "And he let her go." "The Department of Justice of Rio de Janeiro accuses" "Sandro do Nascimento e Ricardo Vieira." "On February 17, 1998, around 1 pm, in Copacabana, the accused began a hold-up" ""I have a '45." "Give me all you got!"" ""Your wallet, your money, all your belongings!"" "After the robbery, the police arrested the accused, taking them to the 12th Precinct to undergo appropriate formalities." "I hereby sentence Sandro do Nascimento to 3 years, 3 months and 20 days in prison." "We are entering one of the worst jails in Rio, the 26th Precinct: "The Vault."" "As you can see, there is no natural light." "The conditions here aren't very agreeable." "It is a bit inhumane, all this darkness." "This is it: "The Vault"." "Closed in." "It's kind of sinister." "It was for real." "The inmates dreaded it." "When they found out they were coming here, they went nuts." "As you can see, this cell would hold at the most 10 inmates in very bad conditions, 10 at the most." "But there could be up to 25 or 30 inmates in here." "You know what they did?" "Half laid down, half stood up." "They took shifts." "They also did this, see?" "They hung over one another in hammocks." "They kept their toothpaste here." "Everything was shared." "If I'm not mistaken, this is a communal strap." "They all hung over one another." "This is where Sandro stayed." "You had approximately 40 people in here." "Sandro was well-behaved." "Weird, isn't it?" "People would say that because he robbed and he was a street kid, he was a rebellious character." "It was quite the opposite." "We, who met him here, in prison he always behaved well." "Was he a criminal?" "Sure he was." "But here in jail he was well-behaved." "He was a peaceful guy." "He never gave us any hassle." "Never caused any troubled." "Although he lived in this..." "I don't know what to call it." "It is no jail." "Anyway, this is what they got." "Sandro made some friends here." "Because in here you had to make friends." "If you make enemies inside, you go to sleep and you're a goner." "No one ever paid Sandro a visit." "Nobody." "Not a friend, much less a relative." "Nobody." "On New Year's Eve 1999, Sandro escaped with some guys." "They got the key, broke into our locker and took my gun and Vitor's." "The leader was Odair of Mangueira." "Sandro, along with some other guys, just went with the flow." "Some cells were open." "He was in one of them." "He took advantage of that and escaped." "When he passed by me, he said:" ""Sorry, gotta go." "This is my chance."" "They escaped peacefully." "They didn't use violence." "They just left." "Took off." "There was some shooting outside." "One of them went down." "Sandro escaped." ""Urgent." "Sandro do Nascimento escaped from the 26th Precinct on January 1, 1999." "One day, he calls me:" ""Auntie, I'm by the ferries."" "I said: "Where?" "In Niteroi or Rio?" "Niteroi."" ""I escaped with some friends." "I'd like you to bring me some trainers."" ""I need you to buy me some trainers and lend me some money."" ""I'm going to change my life." "You'll see." "I'm going to change." ""I'll be famous worldwide."" "He hugged me, he kissed and thanked me." ""Auntie, I'll pay you back." I said: "You don't need to."" ""Sort your life out." "Stop living like this." "Quit running away."" "NOVA HOLANDA FAVELA MARE COMPLEX" "He said: "I don't want to live in Boa Vista with the family." ""I've got a house in Nova Holanda." "I'll take you there someday."" "We'd see each other in Nova Holanda, playing video games on the main street of the favela." "We'd pick up a girl, go to different places, the Stop Time Hotel..." "We led similar lives." "We'd smoke a joint, play soccer, work out, fly kites." "Afterwards, he'd go to his house and I'd go to mine." "All in the neighbourhood." "In Nova Holanda." "He developed a mother and son relationship." "Sandro started living with this woman." "She treated him like a son." "'cause I think you should be by my side."" "He told me about his life, what he had been through." ""Life is short, mom."" "That's how he explained it." "He'd come in and say:" ""I can't believe I have a home."" ""I have a bathroom, I have a stove where I can fry chips."" "He loved chips." "Then he'd fold his arms behind his head and he would stare at the TV." "I took the bed out because he didn't like to sleep on the bed." "He liked to sleep on the floor, with the windows open." "He would tell me:" ""This is like a dream."" ""Is this room really mine?" "Of course." "It is your bedroom."" ""Can I have a TV set here, make a little corner here?" "Sure."" ""If I feel like it, can I lock the door?" "Yes."" "He'd ask my permission for everything." "I really wanted him to feel comfortable." "I said: "Son, if you want," ""when you get a job, even if it's not a regular job," ""you can build an extension to the house." ""Build an extension." "You could raise your family close to me."" "He had willpower, but something put him off his track." "Maybe it was fear." "I'm not sure if he was too shy, or someone threatened him." "I don't know." "He'd say: "I have to be someone in life." ""I want to be an artist." "I want to do something with my life."" ""If you try hard enough, you will make it."" "He'd say: "I want to work." "I will talk to Aunt Yvonne."" "She was his social worker." ""I want her to get me a job." "I want to study and work."" "He'd say things like that." "I'd say: "If you really want it, you can make it."" "I was in touch with him two months before the bus incident." "He asked me for a job." "He said:" ""Aunt Yvonne, I'm tired of this life." "I'd like to get a job." ""Look at me." "Who would give me a job?" ""I can't read or write." "I don't have social security." ""I've never had a job." "What can I do besides what I do now?" ""Who'd give me a chance?" Nobody ever did." "He said that I'd see him on TV, that he'd be famous." "I told him: "I really hope so." "I want to see you as a big success."" ""I want you to see it too." "You'll see it."" ""Even if I don't see it, you will."" "THE NEGOTIATION CONTINUES" "I realised he didn't know who to talk to." "Special Forces had three negotiators at the scene." "It was a mistake." "All the officers there, Col. Penteado, Major Principe and Captain Batista, had been trained in negotiation skills." "They knew how to conduct a negotiation, but they seem to have ignored the rules." "They didn't follow procedure." "This confuses the criminal." "They had to resolve the problem." "The situation was there." "Sandro was volatile, so the situation could be resolved at any time." "Anything you might say could resolve the whole situation." "I think that's why it happened that way." "Why would he talk to Captain Batista after talking to his superior?" "I think that the policeman in charge of the incident was getting a lot of interference." "He wasn't in a situation in which he was able to think." "It was a circus." "People interfered with the situation." "There was a crowd watching." "They were close by." "They interfered." ""Get them some water."" ""Why don't you shoot him?" "Just give him your keys, then."" "All this during a negotiation." "No one can negotiate like that." ""By six o'clock, I'll kill a hostage."" "He obviously wanted to get out of there." "That's what he wanted." "TIME" "He covered me, and I said:" ""I can't see a thing."" "He said: "You don't need to." He said he would count to 100... and then shoot me." "He counted "One..." and walked to the back of the bus." ""Two..." and he'd walk up to the front." "He counted "One, two, three" and then he'd jump to 60." "At each jump, I'd start an Our Father, but never finish it." "Your life passes before you in flashes of everything you've experienced and everything you'd like to do and haven't done." "Hey officer, didn't you watch this film?" "The guy threw her out of the plane." "I'm not throwing her out." "I'm gonna make her kneel and shoot her when I feel like it." "When he made me kneel down it was clear to me that he was going to kill me." "You feel very fragile, because you don't know if you'll live or die." "You're controlled by someone who is willing to kill you, who has nothing to lose." "At the time, I thought I was simply going to die and there was nothing I could do about it." ""Warn them." "Tell them I'm gonna shoot her."" ""Tell them I'm gonna shoot her, or you'll suffer."" "I heard him tell Janaina to lay down." "I thought: "My time has come." "If I'm gonna die, it's gonna be now."" "It is a very tricky situation when there are cameras around." "Is it tolerable?" "Is it tolerable in an incident with ten hostages?" "Yes." "It is not nice to hear that." "No one likes to hear that." "However, casualties are a possibility." "We know there may be casualties." "Sergio!" "There's a driver here for you." "Calm down!" "Put that gun away." "What are you doing?" "Hey, sergeant!" "I asked for a pistol and a hand grenade, right?" "Now I'm gonna put the heat on." "I'm gonna kill one of them now." "Write it down: 300 dollars, two hand grenades, a rifle, or else I kill one of them now!" "Sandro gave us the opportunity." "When the kidnapper starts shooting the hostages, it's time to raid the place." "Everyone started screaming." "It was nerve-racking." "At that moment, I thought the police were going to raid the bus." "For the love of God!" "The criminal would be shot by the sniper and the squad would raid the bus, finish him off, and save the hostages' lives." " He killed a girl, for Christ's sake!" " He killed a girl!" " The guy killed a girl." " I told you he would." "We had no idea how bad the hostage was hit." "The first one is down, you have to go in, even if it puts the lives of the others at risk." "We can't wait for him to shoot everybody." "That gunshot should have been our cue to move in." "Col. Penteado was talking on his mobile all the time and checking with police chief Marta Rocha and the local police commander, who I think was from the 22nd Battallion." "He knew what he had to do." "For some reason, he didn't do it." "At that moment, some of us were positioned and had a clear shot of Sandro." "But the colonel didn't authorize it." "He wanted Sandro alive." "Please, let her go." "Don't do it, Sergio!" "Don't do it!" "I think deep down he knew the right thing to do would be to take the shot." "There was someone possibly injured and in need of medical attention." "Time could be crucial." "But he didn't authorize the shot." "He felt paralyzed by the orders he had received, even if they went against everything that he knew." " Where are the rifles?" " On their way." "They're on their way." "Didn't you want a driver?" "Where's the rifle and the grenade?" "Mr Officer, let's talk." "I'm gonna kill another one." "If I don't get what I asked for." "I'm gonna shoot another one." "If I don't get it by six, she dies." "The police didn't believe it, they didn't want to believe that she was really dead." "For a while, we weren't sure if she had been hit." "Look, the driver is on his way." "We've agreed." "I've got them with me." "She's gonna die now." "He's gonna shoot another girl." "He's already killed one." "He's gonna shoot her soon." "You are not the one with a gun to your head. "Keep calm!"" "Give me a break!" "Trust you?" "When there's a girl bleeding on the floor?" "Is that what you want?" "Shit!" "He asked everyone to scream, to shout, to look desperate." "Janaina, Geisa and I, we all understood." "Everybody cooperated, by screaming and crying beyond the despair that we really felt." "I knew that nothing had happened, that it was a bluff, because the other women didn't jump out of the windows." "I think that anyone on a bus going someplace coming from college, going home, would have jumped." "Mr Officer, one is already down." "Another one is going down." "There's gonna be lots of blood." "Lots of blood." "He wasn't going to kill anyone because it wasn't in his nature." "Or else he'd had done if before in his life, as a street kid, lost in the world, without a thing." "He would have killed before if that was in his character." "At the last second, with the gun pointing at my head, he said: "I'm not gonna kill you, but I'm gonna shoot and I want everybody to scream."" "It was when I heard someone open a window." "I think it was Geisa." "I heard everybody screaming, I was screaming too." "We were putting on an act." "It was an act." "When I realised I was alive," "I started crying to get out of my system everything I had gone through that whole afternoon in his power." "That's when I realised I was OK, that I was alive." "You cry out of joy." "You realize it's all over." "He wanted people outside to see how desperate we were so he could get what he wanted." "Parallel conversations were going on." "One for the cameras and the people outside and one for us inside the bus." "He was in control of the situation." "He could change things any time he liked." "I'm gonna do this one in front of you for you to see." "Show me your gun now." "One!" "Two!" "Everybody was glued to the TV." ""He's grabbed her."" ""He's got her by the hair." "He's put a gun in her mouth."" "I wasn't too fussed." "I didn't know who it was." "I got closer to the TV." "It was like a magnet." ""I think one of the hostages is my wife."" "I ran to the scene." "The area was secured." "I looked around and went under the tape." ""Where are you going?"" "I said:" ""I think one of the hostages is my wife."" ""How do you know that?" "This is her ID card."" ""Stay here." "It will be all right."" ""It will be all right?" "Yeah." "I just hope the police don't fuck it up."" "Check it out!" "Don't you want a driver?" "Sergio, don't you want a driver?" "He's on his way." "It takes time." "There's no driver here." " Deputy, get over here!" " The driver is on his way." "Deputy!" "Deputy, for the love of God!" "Deputy, get over here!" "Get over here!" "You don't want to come here?" "You gonna quit kicking ass?" "You're scared, aren't you?" "You fucked with me and now you're scared!" "I'm gonna shoot her." "He's making his last moves, but he doesn't have it in him to kill an innocent person." "You draw up his psychological profile." "He wants to get out of there, he doesn't want to be arrested again." "When you're arrested, they take you to the police station." "They beat you up really bad when you get there." "If you try anything, it's even worse." "If you try to argue, it's worse." "They knock the shit out of us." "They do what they have to." "TYPICAL POLICE STATION RIO DE JANEIRO 2002" "We were at the 31st Precinct." "They brought us here beating us up on the way." "They kicked our butts." "It's very crowded in here." "There's no place to sleep." "They treat our families badly." "They give us rotten food." "We're constantly hassled." "I have leprosy." "There's no medical assistance." "People are fucked over, some are in here illegally when they should be back with their families." "There's no room in the prisons..." "There is, if you pay them off." "We'll probably be beaten up after you leave." "They beat us up." "These are subhuman conditions." "I've been in jail for over a year." "Neither my family in Paraguay nor the consulate knows about it." "They should be informed because I was wrongly accused." "The situation in Brazil is really bad." "And the prisoner's situation is the worst of all." "How can a prisoner be rehabilitated?" "How do they expect this country to be less violent?" "Treating prisoners the way they do?" "They're not gonna feel good when they leave jail." "They'll probably mug and kill more and more." "Take me, for example." "I'm in jail after I've done my time." "I'm still in custody." "This is crazy!" "Nothing works in this country." "They only care about the elections." "Reality is really sad." "What you see ain't a third of it." "The things we go through here, what we have to go through here, it's really like hell." "We would be better off dead than in here." "That is the truth." "It's better to be dead than to be in jail." "This ain't gonna do any good..." "When they've been arrested before, they are more violent." "It's harder to make them surrender because they know what jail is like." "Hey, this is because you're not getting it." "This is because you're trying to be a hero." "You're trying to be a smart-ass and you have no respect for the life of a citizen." "This is because you're letting a pretty girl like her die." "This is because if you were smart, none of this would happen." "Let's count together!" "Count to seven." "Boom!" "We lived together for six years." "She asked me to marry her the day before." "So, I was going to buy her flowers." "We were going to celebrate Valentine's Day together." "At the time, I didn't understand." "Why didn't the police shoot?" "If the police hadn't stopped me," "I think I would've done something crazy." "I could see she was desperate." "I was in agony." "I yelled: "Aren't you going to do anything?" "Do something!"" "I was sitting down the whole time during the incident." "Then he grabbed me and yelled to the cops:" ""Look how pretty this one is!" "If you don't like the other one, look at her."" "He showed me off at the window for everyone to see." "He stayed with me at the back window, pointing the gun at my forehead for everyone to see." "He told us to cry." "He told us to make things seem more dramatic than they really were." "There was a conversation going on inside the bus, but he didn't want people to notice." "I didn't really believe that he would shoot me." "But, eventually, I actually started to believe it." "The fine line between pretence and reality was broken." "And I believed he would kill me right there." "Then I leaned against him and took hold of his arm." "I asked him not to kill me." "When I realised he might kill me, I begged." "He got annoyed and said:" ""Shut up or I'll really kill you!" "So I looked at him and said:" ""Well, don't you want me to pretend?"" "Then he looked at me and I think he realised that there was some ambiguity in what he was doing." "Either he wanted us to put on an act or he really wanted to kill us." "And then it seemed to me that he felt bad about it." "He felt bad about the fact that I was asking him to comfort me, he who was willing to kill me, or pretending he would." "I didn't know if he was pretending or not, but even if he was pretending, an unexpected move could make the gun go off." "So even if it wasn't his intention to shoot me, it could happen." "He went to the front of the bus three minutes before his deadline." "The criminal said he would shoot everyone at six o'clock." "He said he would kill all the hostages." "He made a hostage write this message on the windscreen with lipstick." "There is a street just after Jardim Botanico." "If he could get the bus there, he would reach the forest." "He would be free." "He could take the hostages to the forest and send them in different directions." "He'd fire some shots, run..." "He'd be free." "He didn't have a plan." "He asked for two hand-grenades, then ammunition, then he wanted to set the bus on fire." "Probably to try to escape while the police would be busy with the hostages." "I don't know if you remember the robbery of Jobim's widow." "One criminal was caught, the other escaped." "Do you remember this?" "One of them escaped, handcuffed." "They couldn't find him in the forest." "After you reach the forest, no one can touch you." "It's eternal freedom for us." "The forest is where we grew up, where we lived." "From Barra da Tijuca to Botafogo." "That's our territory." "We rule in that place." "If he'd thought it through, nobody would have died and he would be free." "Geisa was very scared." "She couldn't even stand up." "Then she sat down and I said:" ""Geisa, he won't kill you." "He won't kill you."" "She said: "He's gonna kill me!" I said: "He won't."" "But she was still petrified." "I made her lean her head on my shoulder and hugged her." "I was trying to soothe her." "She seemed to calm down a little." "I told them that they should make an effort to get closer to him." ""Be his friend, you have to be his friend."" "I think the girl with the glasses understood it." "It seemed that she was doing stuff to create a bond between her and him, which was what we wanted." "Since we weren't really making contact with him we made sure that the hostages did." "I spoke to her, I talked to her and told her this:" ""You have to be calm."" ""You have to make him feel that everything is fine."" "At one stage when things were calmer," "I said to him:" ""You must really like your sister." "What's she like?"" ""She has long hair, a little shorter than yours."" "So I was trying to establish a friendly atmosphere, as if we weren't there." "As if that conversation was taking place elsewhere." "I was trying to take his mind off the situation, the feeling of being trapped." "I was trying to show that I cared about him, in some way, not only because I was scared of what he might do to me, but as a human being." "I don't know what led him to do that, to be who he was." "Now I think: "He was 21 or 22 years old, the same age I am now."" "At the time I was 19." "He had lived as long as I have." "What could have been happening inside his head?" "What happened that led him to do that, to be the person he was?" "BOA VISTA RIO DE JANEIRO" ""O Fluminense" newspaper, March 27, 1988" "The tragedy shocked the residents of Boa Vista." "Clarice was five months pregnant." "She was a cheerful, good-natured woman much admired by her customers and loved by children." "The victim left a trail of blood, from the counter to the street." "She fell out of the door and dragged herself onto the street, screaming for help that never came." "I can only imagine what it was like for Sandro to see those three guys attacking his mother, stabbing her." "I think he stayed by her side during the whole ordeal." "He saw the knife in my sister's back." "I'm sure he did." "My sister came rolling from the kitchen to the bar." "She fell onto her back, it pushed the knife in deeper." "He saw it all." "He only called me after she was already lying on the floor." "He said: "Auntie, come and help Mom." "She's hurt"." "Incident report the body was found on the street in front of the victim's shop." "A kitchen knife with a wooden handle was in the victim's back, at the right shoulder." "The baby stirred in her belly." "I thought she was alive because the baby was moving a lot." "Maybe it was the lack of oxygen." "I don't know." "The baby moved so I asked people to take her to a doctor." "But she was dead." "We were talking as if we were friends." "Then Gloria, who was near us, asked me, at that moment, to put around his neck a chain with an image of the Virgin Mary." "Then I asked him:" ""Do you believe in the Virgin Mary?"" "That was the saint in the pendant." ""No, I only believe in God."" "Then, I asked him:" ""Do you know who's the greatest victim in this bus?" "Of this incident?"" "He stopped and stared at the floor, thinking about it." "Then, I said: "You." He thought about that." "It was as if he had just grasped the situation." "I said: "Sandro, do you want to come to mom's funeral?" "He took a while to answer." "He went to pee and came back." "I said: "Do you want to say goodbye to mommy before she goes to heaven?"" ""Auntie, I'm gonna play marbles." Like nothing had happened." ""No, Auntie." "I'm staying." "I'm flying a kite." He had many excuses." ""I'm flying a kite." He hadn't forgotten what had happened." "He wanted to stay as far away as he could from that neighbourhood." "He wanted to be far from the place where he saw everything happen." "He would make a decision, then he'd change his mind, decide he didn't want to exchange the hostages." "He just wanted to stay there." "He said he didn't trust the cops." "He said he knew they would kill him." "If he didn't watch out, they'd kill him." ""I'm gonna die anyway." "I've got nothing to lose."" "When I got home that night, my mom said that" "Sandro had run away, she hadn't seen him all day." "He went onto the streets and we never saw him again." "Whatever the outcome... the hostages' chances of getting out of there unharmed were far greater than his." "Dead or in jail, he was going to be worse off." "I'm against what he did with that bus." "I'm against what the police did too." "It's all violence, right?" "Nothing can justify what happened." "But he wasn't going to kill anyone in that bus." "He was incapable of it." "He never killed anyone, he never would." "You see, he threatened them, but he wasn't going to kill anyone." "He showed me how to open the bus door." "He was very patient." ""You pull this lever."" "I asked: "Like that?" "No, pull it this way."" ""It's wrong." "Pull it like this." Then I opened the door." "I thought that the situation was going to be resolved positively." "It seemed he disliked Geisa more than the others." "That's how it seemed to me." "During the whole time, it looked like he was angrier with her." "She lied to Sandro." "She told him a lie, that she had a brother in prison." "Sandro found out it was a lie." "This must have caused the opposite effect of the Stockholm Syndrome." "He lost trust in her." "It seemed that if anyone had to die, it would be Geisa." "On the bus she said that Damiana was her mother." "I read Damiana's diaries and found out that she told him her brother had been in prison, or was still in prison." "She said that the prison officers would come to his cell and beat him up." "Damiana said she knew what that was like." "He asked:" ""Where is your brother being held?"" "Geisa didn't know what to say." "In fact, she knew everything about my uncle's life." "But my uncle never stayed in one prison for long." "That's why Geisa didn't know how to answer." "There's no way I would have got caught." "To the forest!" "I know the forest so well, I'd find a way out." "You see?" "I'd have tried something." "Son of a bitch!" "No way they'd get me back to jail." "We'd all go to hell together." "I heard him say: "Let's go for a walk."" "I felt all the emotion, the relief that it was all over." "I didn't know what was going to happen." "That there was going to be shooting." "I said: "Geisa, he is not going to kill you."" "She said: "He'll kill me!" I insisted: "He won't."" "If he'd wanted to kill anyone, he'd have done it in the beginning to show power." "I remember Geisa crying and Sandro pointing a gun to her head." "When he decided to take Geisa outside, nobody was talking to him." "Not even the cops." "He simply made up his mind." "I was talking on the phone when I suddenly realised that he was leaving the bus." "Sandro leaving the bus wasn't good for the police." "Quite the opposite." "A static situation should never be allowed to become mobile." "If he had walked down the street with Geisa he could have been lynched, or he could have taken more hostages." "We didn't expect him to leave the bus." "We thought it was very unlikely, with all those guns around him." "We thought he had realised that any attempt to escape would put his life in danger." "At that time, there were a dozen photographers kneeling in front of me." "When he got off the bus holding a terrified woman, he thought he could use her despair to convince us to let him go away." "He wanted to get out onto the street with her, run away and try to escape." "He was holding onto the girl, but he just wanted to get out." "Negotiate with the police?" "What?" "He was out of his mind." "He said he'd kill anyone who got in his way, that he wanted to get away." "What could those cops do?" "Where would Sandro go?" "Would they shoot him?" "Would there be crossfire with many victims?" "He was going to give himself in." "There were lots of cameras." "He'd come out alive." "He thought:" ""Who would kill me on TV?"" "No one." "What was that policeman thinking?" "Sandro had his back turned, so he took advantage." "But the machine gun's bolt wasn't armed." "He knew that if he released the bolt," "Sandro would spot him." "When he was about a foot from Sandro's head, he released the bolt." "Unfortunately, Sandro spotted him." "He had a hostage, a gun with three bullets, and Marcelo charging him with a gun pointed to his face." "What would be the normal reaction?" "If someone tried to shoot him, his finger was on the trigger." "He should have used the hostage as shield and fired at his attacker." "Even though he knew that the other cops could kill him." "This was the obvious thing to do:" "turn around and fire at the policeman." "Mancha wasn't man enough to blow the cop's head off." "That movement of his head was enough to make Marcelo miss both shots." "At that moment, people realised how unprepared we were." "All the things we asked for, equipment, training, courses..." "It fell to the ground at that moment." "I don't think that Marcelo received any specific orders." ""When he leaves the bus, you shoot."" "I think it was an implicit order." "What did Marcelo do?" "He did what he was taught." "He took the initiative." "Unfortunately, that day we were going to lose." "He missed by an inch." "They're supposed to be trained to deal with these things." "We all make mistakes." "But these are human lives." "It's serious." "Very serious." "The cop came firing at him and he shot the girl." "If he'd shot the police and got away, I'd have applauded him." "If he'd killed two or three cops, all his friends would have applauded him." "But he took the weaker option." "It was the most chaotic moment, because I thought Marcelo had shot him." "So I tried to grab him, to pull him towards me." "Why?" "Because I thought his fingers spasms could pull the trigger and kill Geisa." "So I jumped on him, thinking he was dead, or almost dead." "But to my surprise, he wasn't dead." "I pulled him up and he was alive." "I leant over him and Geisa to try to get his gun in case he fired more shots." "He had fired once as they were falling, and twice more when they were on the ground." "When I got hold of him, he shot her." "Only one cop acted at that moment, when Sandro fell to the floor and started shooting at Geisa." "He was the only officer who tried to take the gun from Sandro and save the hostage's life." "He's the only one who deserves any credit:" "Captain Batista." "I knew she had been hit when I saw her." "From the look in her eyes, I knew a vital organ had been hit." "Son of a bitch!" "I only had time to take the camera off the tripod and run." "Crowds came from everywhere to lynch Sandro." "They wanted revenge." "They wanted to take a little piece of Sandro home, as a souvenir." "I knew that if I ran, no policeman would try to stop me." "I saw a soldier beating him up." "I managed to kick him." "But when I kicked him, there were lots of other people who wanted to kill him." "Everybody felt the same way." "I didn't have time to do much." "I went to kick him, but the soldiers stopped me." "I wish I'd been closer." "I wanted to kill him at the time." "I first saw her when a soldier, a tall firefighter went past carrying her." "I looked at him." "He was much taller than me." "He was strong, but he seemed to be struggling to carry her." "I touched her." "I touched her feet." "Then I saw the blood stains." "A big blood stain on her front." "And when I felt her skin, it was very cold." "Her eyes were turned up and I realised she was dead." "They went at him to kill." "The crowd was pushing the police and yelling:" ""Kill him!" "Kill him!"" "The guy died in front of everyone." "Thousands of people watched it." "The whole of Brazil saw him die." "The police thought that Sandro had been hit." "The blood on Sandro's head made them believe he was hit." "Could this have led the police to execute him?" "Yes." "I wouldn't bet against it." "The officers told me that Sandro was extremely agitated..." "He was struggling, he shattered the police car's windscreen with his feet." "He bit the police officers, he broke an officer's arm." "They say that's why they had to suffocate him, to make him faint." "As for Sandro's death, I have no opinion on the matter." "I don't intend to discuss it." "The crowd wanted to see a show." "At the end of the show, the bad guy dies." "That's common in our society." "The police killed him by asphyxiation." "They suffocated him." "Who in that situation wouldn't kill that hijacker?" "As well as being a cop, a policeman is a human being, who is there watching..." "They too have feelings of hatred and frustration, just like other people, who are powerless to act." "But policemen do have power." "That's normal for them, cowardice." "Cowardice is what they're good at." "Just think of it." "They caught him alive and killed him." "You see?" "They love that." "If they could, they'd kill everybody they arrested." "But when there's people watching, they can't." "The police killed Sandro's friends in Candelaria." "Now, they'd finished the job." "This story comes full circle." "The police do the dirty work that society doesn't want to see, but that the public hopes will get done in some dark corner." "Society wants to get rid of all Sandros." "We want all Sandros to vanish." "We don't want to face reality." "We cannot bear it." "His invisibility was restored by the police force." "Invisibility is perfectly achieved through death." "They killed him because they're used to killing." "They know they won't be punished because who stands up for the Sandros?" "Who will stand up for the Sandros?" "No one." "I think I have forgiven Sandro for what happened." "But I know that's easy to say, because he isn't here, for me to say it to his face:" ""I forgive you."" "Can I forgive him?" "Yes." "I can forgive him for what he did to us, but I cannot forgive him for having shot Geisa." "I can't forgive him for that." "Geisa was 20 years old." "She had her whole life ahead of her." "We were living our simple lives, the way we always did." "We were quiet in our corner, happy, making plans." "And it all ended in a pool of blood." "Today we leave our homes uncertain if we'll be back." "They left home to run some errands." "And she died on the way." "She died on the way." "I really wanted to bury my nephew." "But what would happen if I said I was Sandro's aunt?" "They would come after me at my house, at my work..." "There would be lots of reporters." "I didn't want that." "I dressed him in a white shirt." "And I told him:" ""This is not what you wanted." ""Your dream was to work and raise a family." ""But you took the wrong path." ""This isn't what I wanted for you." ""But Jesus will forgive you." ""God bless you." "Rest in peace."" "During the Brazil v. England game, this guy came and told me:" ""Do you want a gun?" ""Let's rob this flat together."" "I was with him and Tadeu." ""There's lots of gold there."" ""They're very rich."" "I said: "I don't want to do it."" "And my friend said:" ""I don't want to do it either."" "We left him talking there." "My name is Luciana." "I've been on the streets for 19 years." "I hit the streets when I was five." "Do you want to know why?" "I was beaten up by my stepfather and my mother." "Before I hit the streets, I led a decent life." "But my dad was an alcoholic." "When he drank he beat my mother." "So she left and hit the streets." "Can I talk about my dreams?" "My dreams of happiness?" "Happiness..." "I don't think I can be happy." "I don't have mother or father." "I only have my kids." "There's no way I'll ever know happiness." "It's a cold floor." "No comfort." "We sleep under a shelter." "The rich kids sleep up there, on a nice bed." "We sleep down here, on the floor." "When we wake up, there's no breakfast." "We go to the bakery and beg for food." "Sometimes we steal, 'cause there's nothing to eat." "So when we grow up, we're enraged." "Mancha hit the streets when he was a kid." "No one ever cared for him." "The only thing he learned was how to survive." "That's something we all learned, how to survive on our own." "If you are a street kid, and don't make an effort, no one will give you food." "So you learn how to get by." "I was informed via the squad radio that the Special Forces were being deployed in a hostage situation at Jardim Botanico." "I immediately called the unit commander and offered to go there immediately and evaluate the situation." "The commander gave the order." "I was at the Rio-Niteroi bridge." "I headed for the Jardim Botanico." "I was first on the scene." "The first live images on TV were from traffic cameras." "They showed a bus surrounded by the police." "It seemed that a mugger was holding the passengers hostage." "Right away, the newspaper sent almost all its reporters there." "BUS 174" "As soon as I got there, I reported to Col. Soares, who assigned the operation to me." "I was trained to deal with hostage-takers." "I tried to collect information to brief the team that would be arriving." "Following procedure, I tried to establish contact with the hijacker." "I wanted to determine his motives, find out who were we dealing with." "I gave him a name." "I said I was gonna call him Sergio." "He said: "OK." "You can call me Sergio."" "At that point, no one knew he was called Sandro." "THE HIJACKER" "Sandro was only 6 years old when his mother was murdered in front of him in a shack in the Rato Molhado favela." "The boy saw everything." "He didn't have a father." "Grandparents?" "No such thing." "So he was on his own." "He had nobody to look after him." "So he hit the streets." "He went to Meyer." "In Meyer, he met other street kids." "They formed a small gang and went to Copacabana." "There's money and food there." "They go hungry less often." "It's harder to beg in the suburbs." "Here, tourists give you money and food." "That's how it started." "He went from a family tragedy to being in a gang of street kids." "When I first met Sandro, he was a young kid, just like these." "He was in Copacabana, just like they are." "When I came to Copacabana I was the same age." "I said: "Sandro, where did you come from?"" ""I came from home." "What?"" ""I have no where to sleep and I'm hungry."" "When they hit the streets, they are quite naive." "They don't know how to steal, don't smoke pot or sniff glue." "First they try restaurants for food." ""Mate, I can't cover for you." "You gotta do something!"" ""Can't rely on me." They see how you get money." ""Come with me." "We're going mugging."" "That's how it happens." "They become adults pretty fast." "It happens to lots of them." "The so-called "street kids"" "are kids who lost all contact with their families, with anyone they knew, their friends, and neighbourhood." "They choose to forget their past." "They have no past." "Their reality is a street corner and their gang of friends." "Call a cab, let him go." "Sometimes, when the police arrive, the criminal decides to take hostages." "It's an interrupted robbery." "There are philosophical arguments over this." "Some policemen think that one should let the criminal escape to avoid risking innocent lives, to avoid a hostage situation." "THE POLICE" "People who join the police in Rio today are those who haven't been able to get a regular job." "They've usually been unemployed for a long time and had no choice but to become a policeman." "It's a job." "The police are poorly armed, poorly trained and lack self-esteem." "They don't really understand the nature of the job." "They think their duty is to arrest and kill criminals." "Special Squad are more professional than the police." "A Special Squad officer is well-trained in hostage situations, law enforcement in the favela environment and in mediating conflicts." "He is selected through psychological and physical profiling." "My assessment was that it was just another incident where the hijacker would turn himself in." "Because the hijacker's position was very unsafe." "He was in a bus, with windows on every side." "He didn't stand a chance of getting out alive or having his demands met." "Special Squad had never lost a hostage." "We were approaching the Elevado." "We were in a traffic jam when a Special Squad vehicle raced by, so we followed it and got to the scene very quickly." "The situation escalated and he knew that there were a lot of people against him." "All those people around the bus, they were worried about us, the hostages, not about him." "It was him against everybody." "HOSTAGES" "Right at the beginning, when he was holding the first or the second hostage," "I heard him say: "I have four bullets."" "One for him, one for her, and the last ones for you and me." "I was crouching down and he didn't know I was there." "So I managed to make several phone calls to my home, to my boyfriend and to my job." "It's surreal, but I thought the incident would soon be over." "So I said:" ""Look, tell the boss that I'll be late."" ""Tell her not to worry, I'm in a hold-up."" "I hadn't realized it was a hijacking, that I was a hostage in that bus." "To me it was just an incident." "I thought he'd been caught with a gun and just wanted out." "I didn't realize he wanted to keep us until his demands were granted." "I didn't think of it that way." "He took my jacket to hide his face and started taking everything out of my bag." "He took a towel and wrapped it around his face." "At one point, he took me to the driver's seat." "He made me sit on his lap and told me to drive." "He wanted to get out of there." "He kept threatening me, saying:" ""Tell them I want this, I want that."" ""Tell them or else I shoot you." "If you don't tell them, I'll shoot you."" "He said he didn't want cameramen or photographers around." "He yelled to the police:" ""Get him out of there!"" "There was a photographer right in front on the bus." "The police were focused on resolving the situation, on getting Sandro out of there, killing him... ending the situation." "They were trying to do that, but they forgot to isolate the area." "Very few policemen were taking control of the area." "Nothing prevented us from approaching the bus." "Reporters were getting closer and closer, trying to obtain better information and better images." "The crowd was right there, near the bus." "If this guy was really violent, he would not only shoot the hostages, he would have shot people randomly." "Just like an American cop movie." "He said: "Aren't you gonna tell that guy to move?" ""Tell him to get out of there!"" "Dozens of lives were in danger." "If he'd fired towards the front of bus, we would have been hit." "THE COMMANDER" "Col. Penteado was informed that the hijacker was armed, the hammer was cocked, his finger was on the trigger, and he had already fired a shot." "We briefed him and he started taking decisions straight way." "He became the operation's commander." "The cordon, which hadn't been created properly, was strengthened." "We positioned ourselves in front of Sandro and to the right of the bus." "Snipers were positioned in the park." "The perimeter was covered and the situation was under control." "The commander took measures to bring the situation under control." "He was totally out of control." "He said he was going to kill us all." "He kept saying that all his family was dead." "They were dead, he had nothing to lose." "That scared me." "He sang dreadful songs that made me feel very nervous." "His behaviour suggested to me that he was high on drugs." "I was frightened." "Very frightened." "I didn't evaluate him psychologically." "That wasn't my intention." "I wasn't considering whether his behaviour was psychotic, schizophrenic or that of a drug addict." "I didn't take that into account." "I really didn't." "If he was a street kid, if the police had known that before the negotiations, they would have taken into account his personality as a street kid." "They would have realized that he could be unpredictable." "This Sandro is a symbol, a paradigm, an example of our "invisible kids"." "The invisible kids eventually emerge and take centre stage, and confront us with their violence, which is nothing but a desperate and impotent cry for help." "We have not dealt with our problems:" "social exclusion, racism, and other kinds of prejudices." "People get used to coexisting with the Sandros, with the sons and daughters of family tragedies." "This has become part of our daily lives." "The children's greatest battle is against invisibility." "We are nothing until someone recognizes our value validates our existence, tells us we are worthy." "Until someone reflects our image back, gives us some recognition." "These children are starved of a social existence, starved of recognition." "There is another side to this invisibility." "Any black kid, a poor kid..." "These kids move around the streets of all Brazilian cities, invisible." "He is socially invisible." "This invisibility happens in two different ways." "The child is invisible because his presence is ignored, he's looked down on, or because we stigmatise him, and see only a caricature." "When we project our prejudices onto someone, we cancel out, we destroy the individuality which makes that person unique." "We only see what we project onto him, a caricature, our own prejudices." "They consider us criminals, but we're not!" "We're just trying to make a living." "Nobody's trying to fuck anybody over." "We don't want to steal, be shot at and end up dead." "We are just trying to make a living, but we always get fucked over." "We would like society to see us differently." "Because if society keeps seeing us like that, we don't stand a chance." "If they gave us an opportunity, I'm sure we'd make it." "Lots of street kids dream of having a future." "Not everyone is a criminal." "Not everyone is a drug-dealer." "There are lots of victims on the streets." "They come...." "I sell sweets on the street." "They kick my merchandise, call me names." ""Criminal!" "You bloody criminal!"" "So I'm forced to make a scene, yell that I am a street vendor." "I have my merchandise to prove I'm not a criminal!" "I'm a street vendor and they treat me like that." "Nobody gives us a chance." "They just ignore us." "If things carry on like this, it will only get worse." "It won't get any better." "Actually, it didn't look like he had a plan." "We thought he was a common criminal, interrupted during a robbery." "He didn't make any demands." "He didn't say: "I want a helicopter." Which was a good sign." "We were dealing with someone who didn't want anything." "But I surely did." "I constantly told him, and everyone else there, that he would have to free the hostages." "That's all." "He said: "What about you?" I was carrying a rucksack." "He said: "Are you a student?" "Yes, I'm a student."" ""Then you should go." "You must be late."" ""Get over there, open the door, and close it from the outside."" "And I said: "OK."" "From the moment he let a hostage go, I felt more confident." "Then I started to use different methods, techniques, to persuade him to change his mind about the hostages." "Then he let me go." "He grabbed Janaina and made us empty our purses." "He took a lipstick out of one of the bags." "He handed it to me and said:" ""Come over here." "Come and write on the windscreen."" "I don't know what came into my head," "I wanted everybody outside to be able to read." "I had the presence of mind to think:" ""Write backwards."" "It's easy to do if you're fooling around, but at gunpoint it is not easy." "HE IS GOING TO KILL EVERYBODY" "He was acting violently because of the cameras." "He was thinking about how he was coming across." "He was putting on a little show." "AT SIX O'CLOCK" "I had the impression that the whole world was watching us." "That it was all aired on TV." "I think that all those cameras made him feel powerful." "He knew he was being filmed and he wanted to be filmed." "He played it and he played it well." "But he knew what would happen if he got caught." "He knew that the TV was actually protecting him." "The media's presence makes the hijacker confident." "It's obvious." "It's a guarantee that he won't be shot dead." "Making the incident last longer was his way of conveying a message." "It allowed him to show he was powerful, that he was somebody." "That was as important to him as getting out of there alive." "In that sense, the TV cameras mattered to him." "Sandro got us all in front of the TV." "He imposed his visibility." "He was the main character of a new narrative." "He redefined the social narrative." "The story which had always placed him in a subordinate position turned into a tale where he had the leading role." "I wanted to understand why he was doing it." "A boy with a gun can make us feel something." "He can make us feel fear." "A negative feeling, but a feeling." "Through it, he regains his visibility, he reaffirms his social existence, his human existence." "It is a process of self-creation." "A process of self-invention through violence, through a gun." "It's a perverse pact, a sort of Faustian pact." "The boy swaps his future, his life, his soul, for an ephemeral moment of glory." "The small glory of being acknowledged, valued, of feeling self-confident." "This is a crucial moment." "It is at the centre of the problem." "If we can't understand its depth and complexity, we will never learn how to deal with it." "HE IS CRAZY" "HE IS GOING TO KILL ME" "Check this out!" "The same way you are mean, I'm not fucking around either." "I don't give a shit about the police here." "Some serious shit is gonna go down." "Stare at my face." "You bet it is a crime." "It's serious shit!" "I'll blow her head off if I don't get a grenade." "I'll put the heat on." "Just wait and see." "At six o'clock, she dies." "The whole country can watch." "I'm gonna put the heat on." "15 years ago, they tore my mother's head off." "I've got nothing to lose." "I'll put on the heat." "Just wait and see." "She'll be the first to die." "Hear what I say?" "You don't scare me." "I don't give a shit." "This is no action movie." "This is serious shit, man." "It's no use in terrorising me." "This is serious." "Didn't you terrorise me when you could?" "Didn't you slaughter those people in Vigario?" "Didn't you kill my friends in Candelaria?" "I was there." "You weren't there?" "Ask Aunt Yvonne." "This is what happened in Candelaria." "There was a group of kids who slept in the square, under a shelter just in front of the church." "Sandro was one of them." "I always called him Sandro." ""Mancha" was a nickname, because he had a birthmark." "From here to there is where the kids made their beds with cardboards and blankets." "They left everything set up." "This is where we would all gather together to chat and tell our stories." "We would go down to Bob's and buy those combos with fries, fizzy drinks and ice creams." "We'd come back there and lay the food on the ground, on some cardboard." "We'd open the bags and everybody would help themselves." "We'd eat the fries and the burger." "We always left the ice cream last." "We would share out spoonfuls of ice cream." "When we were full, we'd chuck food at each other." "It was cool." "We felt like rich kids." "Sometimes when Sandro was sad, he'd climb up on top of the newsstand." "He would stay there." "We'd say: "What are you thinking?"" "He used to say he was just thinking things over." "Then we would tease him and say:" ""Thinking of who to mug?" ""How much money you will make?" We teased him like that." "The beds came up to here." "Many of them preferred to sleep somewhere more hidden." "Because at night, people would come by and throw a stone." "At the time, they were using stones to kill people." "They used paving stones." "They'd wait till you were asleep." "They'd drop the stone on your head and your brains would spill out." "22 JULY 1993" "The birthday one of the volunteers who looked after the children at Candelaria." "The Candelaria group started out small but it suddenly became crowded with children from the area, the Rato Molhado favela." "Sandro was still the same as ever." "He was introverted and he had learning difficulties." "He would always tell me his mother's story." "That she was murdered in front of him." "He never knew who his father was." "Never met him." "What do you think about the way you live?" "I reckon it's better than living with my folks." " We never got along." " Where did you live?" "I used to live in Vigario Geral." "I left home after fighting with my dad." "Mancha... he was a cool guy." "I just told you how I hit the streets." "It was similar for him." "Maybe he didn't have a family." "He never told us if he had a mother." "He said that he didn't have a family." "He had nothing." "So that was the only way he knew how to survive." "I'm 17 and I've been living on the streets since I was 8 years old." "I stick around this area, and mostly I hang out at Maua Square, but lately I'm living here with these guys." "When we met, I think I was 16 and he was 13." "We met through living in the same area, sleeping in the same place." "So we became friends." "We'd sniff glue together." "Mancha did a lot of mugging at traffic lights, you know?" "He did a lot of mugging at traffic lights to buy cocaine." "To survive, to buy his glue, his food, his clothes." "He did a lot of different drugs." "When he was stoned, he would mug." "That was it." "We all did the same thing." " What would make you happy?" " A house, a home..." "Food, everything." "A blanket." "A proper house to live in." "Tell us how your life is, Rogerinho." "I already did." "My life here is..." "Tell us about your daily life, where you sleep." "I sleep down there." "I take a bath over there." "I play football on that street." "I pray in this church, I hang around here, I see everything that goes on." "I see the cops beat us up over there." "I see everything." "You don't have to see that, you can feel it!" "What did you say about the police?" "They hit us, they beat us, and tell us to get out." " Uniformed officers?" " Yeah." "NEXT DAY" "A friend of ours was being beaten up by the cops." "We didn't like that." "There was a big group of us." "It was a kind of rebellion." "A protest." "We fought with the police officers." "Then some of them threatened us." "They said they'd come back later." "We didn't take them seriously." "Who would think that, in the centre of the town, there'd be a massacre of so many children ?" "So we stayed." "When it was around midnight, around that time, two cars stopped." "Since it was a weekend, we thought it was the soup ladies who used to bring us soup at night." "We thought it was them." "Everyone walked towards the car to get the soup." "One guy came out shooting from behind the newsstand and the others came out of the cars shooting at us." "All I could see was my friends lying on the ground, bleeding, dying." "Hey, you!" "Go ahead!" "Check it out, Brazil!" "I was at Candelaria." "This is serious shit." "They murdered my friends." "I have nothing to lose." "I'll put the heat on." "Just you wait and see." "There were seven victims at Candelaria." "62 kids remained." "I recently concluded a study on the fate of these kids." "39 were murdered, some disappeared, and some still live in dire conditions." "I recall that a radio station did a survey and most of the people said it was a good thing." "That we should kill them and clean the city." "DECEMBER 1993" "Afterwards, he hung out in different streets." "The kids spread out all over town." "Many started working for dealers." "And were killed because of it." "I didn't see him for quite a while." "Mancha, the gang and I used to sleep under a bridge when it was cold." "It was near a theatre where they showed children's plays." ""COELHO" FORMER STREET KID" "There was a group of kids who slept in the botanical gardens." "One day I walked by and invited them to come to the university and study capoeira." "They started going to the university and stayed with me for two years." "They never stole anything from my office." "There was always money lying around." "They were always in my office, but never took anything." "They got used to that life." "They behaved like normal kids who liked to hang in trendy places." "They would go to the same beaches as everyone else." "CAPOEIRA BAPTISM AT THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY" "Everybody knew him as "Sandrinho from Candelaria"." "That episode had traumatised him." "They were very scared of dying." "They always talked about death." "They talked a lot about it." "At the time, they used to shoot street kids when they were asleep." "It was something that disturbed them at the time." "Candelaria was still fresh in their memories." "What screwed up Mancha was sniffing glue." "I used to tell him: "Stop that, mate."" ""Forget it." "This is what I do." "But I want to get fit."" ""But I want to fight capoeira and be fit like you."" "I said: "Fine." "Let's start exercising."" "BAPTISED AS "ALEX MANCHA"" "He was the quietest in the group and the first to disappear." "It's that shit, mate." "The fucking glue." "The same way it fucked him up, it damages loads of other street kids." "Sandro was always high on coke." "He loved it." "He mugged so he could snort." "Sandro didn't care about trendy clothes." "The only thing he cared about was cocaine." "He'd stay high for two days on a binge." "To do what he did, he must have been very high." "He must have been awake doing coke or something for three days non-stop." "But he was also frightened." "He looked scared in the bus." "That was the problem." "He was alert because of the coke high." "But he was scared at the same time." "The Candelaria tragedy hadn't been resolved and we were already living another tragedy, which was an extension of the first one." "Sandro, a victim of Candelaria, was the perpetrator of Bus 174." "As if to alert us to the fact that we need to resolve a more pressing issue." "An issue bigger than Candelaria and Bus 174." "Bigger than all of our everyday tragedies." "Check this out." "Soon it will be six." "You want to see it, don't you?" "I'll blow her head off." "The invisibility comes on top of the natural problems of adolescence." "So we can imagine how difficult this child's journey must have been, his life in this city as an invisible being." "Our society treats them not as human beings, but as rubbish." "They are thrown onto the scrapheap and we wash our hands of them completely." "PADRE SEVERIANO INSTITUTE FOR YOUNG OFFENDERS" "A lady driving her car stopped at a traffic light and was surrounded by teenagers who demanded her money." "They threatened to knife her." "They took her watch and her money." "An officer managed to arrest one of them" "Sandro Rosa do Nascimento, 16 years old." "Nothing was found with him." "The sentence." "Considering the youth's confession, Sandro should be sent to a socio-educational correctional facility." "This will provide him with protection, steer him towards a job and re-admittance into society." "State Justice Department," "Social Services and Psychology Department report" "Sandro Rosa do Nascimento, 16, has physical injuries." "He does not live with his family." "The youth lives in the street, mainly in the Southern District." "His mother died several years ago." "He used to live with his Aunt Ju." "Never met his father." "Note The youth resists giving information on his status, stating that he doesn't recall things because he has too many problems." "He won't talk about these problems." "Drug dependency Unknown." "Has used cocaine for two days." "Summary Youth on his fourth term." "Did not serve previous sentences." "Lives in the streets with friends since his mother died four years ago." "His legal guardian was notified on January 12, 1996." "Her name is Aunt Julieta, but he is not sure of her address." "After a month, Sandro started receiving visits from his aunt and his 14 year-old sister who lives with the aunt's family." "Seeing his family again has had a positive effect." "Sandro feels more positive about his future." "According to Sandro, the break-up of his family with the murder of his mother was very traumatic." "It led to him leaving his aunt's house and joining street gangs, where he turned to anti-social behaviour." "Psychological report" "Sandro's behaviour in the facility is totally appropriate, complying with the rules and being cooperative." "I was totally heartbroken when I got there." "I cried." "They even laughed at me." "I worried about those children." "The guards would beat the kids with their batons." "I said: "When these kids get out of this place, they'll be worse."" "They have no support, no one to care for them." "I think that violence..." "The world is already a violent place." "Lock kids in a prison and mistreat them, they'll come out worse." "Padre Severiano is a dump for human beings." "Do you know what I mean?" "I was his aunt and I couldn't get him out." "He was in State custody." "I've been sent to Padre Severiano 20 times or more." "What did I ever learn in there?" "Nothing." "All I got was more and more enraged." "The staff there just beat us, you see?" "They taught us nothing." "They beat us with chains." "I was 13 when I was sent to Padre Severiano, in 1994." "I was arrested in a robbery in Humaita." "When I was a street kid, I smoked pot, sniffed glue, all that." "Mancha and I were in custody in the Joao Alves School, at the Padre Severiano Institute." "Several other kids who grew up with him were there." "He seemed like a regular kid." "Just like the rest of the kids that lived there." "Sometimes we were in custody." "Sometimes we were on the streets." "That's the way it is." "One day you win, the other you lose." "The staff was bribed by some of the young inmates." "Some of the guys in custody are drug-dealers, kidnappers, assassins, and they have money." "I could have lots of money, but I would never show it." "Wear a lot of gold on me." "What for?" "So the cops can jump me?" "When we catch cops, we cut their throats." "Cut their throats, pour petrol on them and set them alight." "Reduce them to ashes." "What?" "Pity?" "If they don't give me the money, I set them on fire." "Just try me." "I turn them into human torches." "You shitting me?" "Remember the job where some friends soaked the old lady in petrol but got caught?" "They all grew up with me." "About Mancha..." "I know the thoughts he had." "He led a similar life to ours." "That bus thing..." "I don't know why he got on the bus." "Maybe he saw someone come out of a bank and get on the bus." "Maybe he wanted to rob the bus." "If he did, that was stupid." "We don't rob buses." "We rob rich people." "He used to say: "Auntie, when the heat's on in one place," "I go someplace else." "When it heats up there, I move on."" ""Auntie, there's going to be a rebellion." "We'll escape."" "I said: "You won't escape." "Stay where you are!"" ""If I don't escape, when they come back, they'll kill me."" "So I went and talked to somebody in charge." "I told this lady that some kids were going to escape, but Sandro would stay." "She said: "I doubt it." But I said: "Sandro won't escape."" "They can't shoot the inmates inside, you see?" "They can't shoot us inside the institution." "They really can't." "So we create havoc." "As many as 200, 300, 500, 800 have escaped at a time." "I escaped once during Carnival, with 400 guys." "The school was empty." "But in a month, it was crowded again, so that you'd have two guys sharing a bed." "Sandro do Nascimento escaped on November 1, 1994." "What was his demand?" "300 dollars?" "What for?" "To get back to the favela, buy some new clothes and that's it?" "300 dollars?" "What for?" "I'd ask for a hand grenade." ""Who in this bus can drive?" "Nobody?"" ""Send up a cop who can drive." "Any of these cocksuckers."" "A hand grenade without the pin." ""Go." "Drive!" I'd like to see him refuse." "I too have children, you see?" "Send any cop to drive the bus." "I'd like to see him refuse." "I'd hold the hand grenade without the pin." "There were more than 10 passengers." "The grenade goes off, everybody dies." "The bus runs on petrol." "If he really wanted a hand grenade and a Uzi he could get it in the favela." "He could buy them in the favela and hit the streets." "It would be better for him, because nobody would shoot him." "He would be holding a grenade." "Who would risk it?" "If the grenade went off, everybody would be killed." "I want two grenades and two 45s, or the one with the heart problem dies and then I shoot her in the face." "THE POLICE'S OPTIONS" "We have four different tactics for resolving hostage situations." "One is negotiation." "Two is the employment of a non-lethal agent." "Number three would be a sniper and number four would be an assault team that could raid the bus." "All these teams have to be synchronized." "They would act as a unit under the command of a single leader." "That would be Col. Penteado." "He would have to be at a Crisis Centre nearby in order to coordinate the teams." "I started noticing the lack of police equipment." "The police would use hand signals to communicate." ""Behind the car!" The police had no radios." "They had to use hand signals and mimicry to communicate from one side of the bus to the other." "There was a lack of resources." "So we had to improvise." "The only way to talk to my colleagues was to go up and talk to them." "What was needed was a communication device capable of linking the entire police force in a network enabling the information to reach the decision-maker." "We didn't have that at the scene." "The state of Rio had bought 2,500 police cars." "For the price of just one of those cars, you could buy all the equipment that Special Squad needed." "Any weaknesses in the police department of a state or country will become obvious in a hostage situation." "Most of our officers had not received any training for more than two years." "The outcome could not be positive." "Unless God wanted otherwise." "We had success in previous situations, but we were approaching chaos." "We had reached our limit." "This was bound to happen." "Geisa was worried about Damiana." "Today we know that Damiana had already suffered a stroke." "I think she mentioned it to us." "Geisa became desperate when she noticed that Damiana was getting worse." "This is my mother." "She has to write everything down because she can't talk due to the problems she had after the incident." "She wrote: "At one point, I couldn't stand the torture any longer." ""I called Sandro and said:" "'Why are you doing this to us?" ""'It's not our fault what you are going through.'" "He said: "Lady, I don't want to kill." "I just want to get out."" ""But if there's no other way, I'll turn the heat on."" "I saw my mother on the bus, her mouth distorted." "Geisa was comforting her." "That's when Geisa started to shiver, in shock." "When she saw my mother's mouth, she panicked." "Hey there, you bunch of heroes!" "One is dying from a heart problem and I'm gonna shoot the other at six." "This ain't no action movie!" "In a very frail voice, she told Geisa:" ""I can't stand it anymore."" "He stuck the gun out of the window." "His whole arm out of the window." "Then his head too." "The elite police outside and he sticks his head out of the window!" "He stuck his arm out and only had a gun." "They could've shot his arm." "He wouldn't be able to kill us unarmed!" "You can't leave six people at someone's mercy when you don't know what he might do." "In that situation, a sniper shot would have been ideal." "But this was being broadcast live to the whole country and the outcome could be that something like half a kilo of his brain would be splattered all over the bus windows." "I wouldn't like to see that." "My family wouldn't like to see that either." "But, technically, that would've been the best thing to do." "When I saw the police in the park my biggest fear was that someone might take a shot." "I believe that if someone had fired at us, he'd have shot me as well." "If a sniper's shot had hit him in the triangular area between his eyes and mouth, the bullet would have hit his nervous system." "He'd have been dead in 7 milliseconds." "He wouldn't even have blinked." "We had men capable of taking this shot." "You don't want to take risks, right?" "I dare you to do something." "Come out, cowards!" "Col. Penteado asked me to take the shot." "He asked me if I could take the shot." "I said I couldn't." "My gun was in the holster and I couldn't shoot him without him noticing my movements." "So he said: "Get over there," ""and get a volunteer to take the shot."" "So that's what I am doing here." "The guy who's giving the thumbs up if I'm not mistaken, is Captain Ricardo Soares." "It's him offering to take the shot." "Col. Penteado favoured that option." "He wanted the shot to be taken." "Some officers told me the governor called." "Others said that the chief of police was in charge of the situation from afar." "Only Col. Penteado knows the truth." "But no one is capable of dealing with such a crisis from a distance." "To me it makes no difference who interfered." "Whoever it was, he made a mistake." "Once he took the first call, probably from the governor, he had to follow orders." "He had to carry out his orders:" ""Spare the kidnapper's life."" "Any laymen in police tactics could point out at least ten opportunities for a clear shot." "Especially us, who are trained for it." ""Sergio, why don't you take us outside to form a circle around you?" ""With a circle of people..." "They won't be able to shoot you." ""Everybody will see." "There are cameras." "He said: "Lady, you don't know what a criminal's life is like." ""I can't ask for the support of the gangs." ""I can't be arrested." "If I am, I'll be killed."" "Then my mother started to talk to Sandro about his life." "He said: "Lady, you know nothing."" "She replied: "I do." "My brother is in prison."" "He said: "Look what they did to my back."" "He showed her what they did to him in prison." "She said: "That thing on your back, my brother has it too." ""My brother is a convict like you." ""He went through everything you went through."" "Geisa asked him to let her leave because her mother was feeling sick." "She called Damiana "mom"." "When he said Damiana could leave," "Geisa followed her, expecting to leave with her." "That is what she wanted to do." ""No." "She's the only one leaving." "You're not going!"" "Then he said: "Let her go." "She's gonna die anyway."" "I heard it because I was right next to him." "Let me go with her!" "She'll collapse." "Let me go." "This is what happened with Damiana." "She gained her freedom by telling him things." "She even said she had a child in prison who was suffering like him." "She said she understood him." "I remember he said:" ""If you have a child in jail, then it's OK."" "And he let her go." "The Department of Justice of Rio de Janeiro accuses" "Sandro do Nascimento e Ricardo Vieira." "On February 17, 1998, around 1 pm, in Copacabana, the accused began a hold-up" ""I have a '45." "Give me all you got!"" ""Your wallet, your money, all your belongings!"" "After the robbery, the police arrested the accused, taking them to the 12th Precinct to undergo appropriate formalities." "I hereby sentence Sandro do Nascimento to 3 years, 3 months and 20 days in prison." "We are entering one of the worst jails in Rio, the 26th Precinct: "The Vault."" "As you can see, there is no natural light." "The conditions here aren't very agreeable." "It is a bit inhumane, all this darkness." "This is it: "The Vault"." "Closed in." "It's kind of sinister." "It was for real." "The inmates dreaded it." "When they found out they were coming here, they went nuts." "As you can see, this cell would hold at the most 10 inmates in very bad conditions, 10 at the most." "But there could be up to 25 or 30 inmates in here." "You know what they did?" "Half laid down, half stood up." "They took shifts." "They also did this, see?" "They hung over one another in hammocks." "They kept their toothpaste here." "Everything was shared." "If I'm not mistaken, this is a communal strap." "They all hung over one another." "This is where Sandro stayed." "You had approximately 40 people in here." "Sandro was well-behaved." "Weird, isn't it?" "People would say that because he robbed and he was a street kid, he was a rebellious character." "It was quite the opposite." "We, who met him here, in prison he always behaved well." "Was he a criminal?" "Sure he was." "But here in jail he was well-behaved." "He was a peaceful guy." "He never gave us any hassle." "Never caused any troubled." "Although he lived in this..." "I don't know what to call it." "It is no jail." "Anyway, this is what they got." "Sandro made some friends here." "Because in here you had to make friends." "If you make enemies inside, you go to sleep and you're a goner." "No one ever paid Sandro a visit." "Nobody." "Not a friend, much less a relative." "Nobody." "On New Year's Eve 1999, Sandro escaped with some guys." "They got the key, broke into our locker and took my gun and Vitor's." "The leader was Odair of Mangueira." "Sandro, along with some other guys, just went with the flow." "Some cells were open." "He was in one of them." "He took advantage of that and escaped." "When he passed by me, he said:" ""Sorry, gotta go." "This is my chance."" "They escaped peacefully." "They didn't use violence." "They just left." "Took off." "There was some shooting outside." "One of them went down." "Sandro escaped." ""Urgent." "Sandro do Nascimento escaped from the 26th Precinct on January 1, 1999." "One day, he calls me:" ""Auntie, I'm by the ferries."" "I said: "Where?" "In Niteroi or Rio?" "Niteroi."" ""I escaped with some friends." "I'd like you to bring me some trainers."" ""I need you to buy me some trainers and lend me some money."" ""I'm going to change my life." "You'll see." "I'm going to change." ""I'll be famous worldwide."" "He hugged me, he kissed and thanked me." ""Auntie, I'll pay you back." I said: "You don't need to."" ""Sort your life out." "Stop living like this." "Quit running away."" "NOVA HOLANDA FAVELA MARE COMPLEX" "He said: "I don't want to live in Boa Vista with the family." ""I've got a house in Nova Holanda." "I'll take you there someday."" "We'd see each other in Nova Holanda, playing video games on the main street of the favela." "We'd pick up a girl, go to different places, the Stop Time Hotel..." "We led similar lives." "We'd smoke a joint, play soccer, work out, fly kites." "Afterwards, he'd go to his house and I'd go to mine." "All in the neighbourhood." "In Nova Holanda." "He developed a mother and son relationship." "Sandro started living with this woman." "She treated him like a son." "'cause I think you should be by my side."" "He told me about his life, what he had been through." ""Life is short, mom."" "That's how he explained it." "He'd come in and say:" ""I can't believe I have a home."" ""I have a bathroom, I have a stove where I can fry chips."" "He loved chips." "Then he'd fold his arms behind his head and he would stare at the TV." "I took the bed out because he didn't like to sleep on the bed." "He liked to sleep on the floor, with the windows open." "He would tell me:" ""This is like a dream."" ""Is this room really mine?" "Of course." "It is your bedroom."" ""Can I have a TV set here, make a little corner here?" "Sure."" ""If I feel like it, can I lock the door?" "Yes."" "He'd ask my permission for everything." "I really wanted him to feel comfortable." "I said: "Son, if you want," ""when you get a job, even if it's not a regular job," ""you can build an extension to the house." ""Build an extension." "You could raise your family close to me."" "He had willpower, but something put him off his track." "Maybe it was fear." "I'm not sure if he was too shy, or someone threatened him." "I don't know." "He'd say: "I have to be someone in life." ""I want to be an artist." "I want to do something with my life."" ""If you try hard enough, you will make it."" "He'd say: "I want to work." "I will talk to Aunt Yvonne."" "She was his social worker." ""I want her to get me a job." "I want to study and work."" "He'd say things like that." "I'd say: "If you really want it, you can make it."" "I was in touch with him two months before the bus incident." "He asked me for a job." "He said:" ""Aunt Yvonne, I'm tired of this life." "I'd like to get a job." ""Look at me." "Who would give me a job?" ""I can't read or write." "I don't have social security." ""I've never had a job." "What can I do besides what I do now?" ""Who'd give me a chance?" Nobody ever did." "He said that I'd see him on TV, that he'd be famous." "I told him: "I really hope so." "I want to see you as a big success."" ""I want you to see it too." "You'll see it."" ""Even if I don't see it, you will."" "THE NEGOTIATION CONTINUES" "I realised he didn't know who to talk to." "Special Forces had three negotiators at the scene." "It was a mistake." "All the officers there, Col. Penteado, Major Principe and Captain Batista, had been trained in negotiation skills." "They knew how to conduct a negotiation, but they seem to have ignored the rules." "They didn't follow procedure." "This confuses the criminal." "They had to resolve the problem." "The situation was there." "Sandro was volatile, so the situation could be resolved at any time." "Anything you might say could resolve the whole situation." "I think that's why it happened that way." "Why would he talk to Captain Batista after talking to his superior?" "I think that the policeman in charge of the incident was getting a lot of interference." "He wasn't in a situation in which he was able to think." "It was a circus." "People interfered with the situation." "There was a crowd watching." "They were close by." "They interfered." ""Get them some water."" ""Why don't you shoot him?" "Just give him your keys, then."" "All this during a negotiation." "No one can negotiate like that." ""By six o'clock, I'll kill a hostage."" "He obviously wanted to get out of there." "That's what he wanted." "TIME" "He covered me, and I said:" ""I can't see a thing."" "He said: "You don't need to." He said he would count to 100... and then shoot me." "He counted "One..." and walked to the back of the bus." ""Two..." and he'd walk up to the front." "He counted "One, two, three" and then he'd jump to 60." "At each jump, I'd start an Our Father, but never finish it." "Your life passes before you in flashes of everything you've experienced and everything you'd like to do and haven't done." "Hey officer, didn't you watch this film?" "The guy threw her out of the plane." "I'm not throwing her out." "I'm gonna make her kneel and shoot her when I feel like it." "When he made me kneel down it was clear to me that he was going to kill me." "You feel very fragile, because you don't know if you'll live or die." "You're controlled by someone who is willing to kill you, who has nothing to lose." "At the time, I thought I was simply going to die and there was nothing I could do about it." ""Warn them." "Tell them I'm gonna shoot her."" ""Tell them I'm gonna shoot her, or you'll suffer."" "I heard him tell Janaina to lay down." "I thought: "My time has come." "If I'm gonna die, it's gonna be now."" "It is a very tricky situation when there are cameras around." "Is it tolerable?" "Is it tolerable in an incident with ten hostages?" "Yes." "It is not nice to hear that." "No one likes to hear that." "However, casualties are a possibility." "We know there may be casualties." "Sergio!" "There's a driver here for you." "Calm down!" "Put that gun away." "What are you doing?" "Hey, sergeant!" "I asked for a pistol and a hand grenade, right?" "Now I'm gonna put the heat on." "I'm gonna kill one of them now." "Write it down: 300 dollars, two hand grenades, a rifle, or else I kill one of them now!" "Sandro gave us the opportunity." "When the kidnapper starts shooting the hostages, it's time to raid the place." "Everyone started screaming." "It was nerve-racking." "At that moment, I thought the police were going to raid the bus." "For the love of God!" "The criminal would be shot by the sniper and the squad would raid the bus, finish him off, and save the hostages' lives." " He killed a girl, for Christ's sake!" " He killed a girl!" " The guy killed a girl." " I told you he would." "We had no idea how bad the hostage was hit." "The first one is down, you have to go in, even if it puts the lives of the others at risk." "We can't wait for him to shoot everybody." "That gunshot should have been our cue to move in." "Col. Penteado was talking on his mobile all the time and checking with police chief Marta Rocha and the local police commander, who I think was from the 22nd Battallion." "He knew what he had to do." "For some reason, he didn't do it." "At that moment, some of us were positioned and had a clear shot of Sandro." "But the colonel didn't authorize it." "He wanted Sandro alive." "Please, let her go." "Don't do it, Sergio!" "Don't do it!" "I think deep down he knew the right thing to do would be to take the shot." "There was someone possibly injured and in need of medical attention." "Time could be crucial." "But he didn't authorize the shot." "He felt paralyzed by the orders he had received, even if they went against everything that he knew." " Where are the rifles?" " On their way." "They're on their way." "Didn't you want a driver?" "Where's the rifle and the grenade?" "Mr Officer, let's talk." "I'm gonna kill another one." "If I don't get what I asked for." "I'm gonna shoot another one." "If I don't get it by six, she dies." "The police didn't believe it, they didn't want to believe that she was really dead." "For a while, we weren't sure if she had been hit." "Look, the driver is on his way." "We've agreed." "I've got them with me." "She's gonna die now." "He's gonna shoot another girl." "He's already killed one." "He's gonna shoot her soon." "You are not the one with a gun to your head. "Keep calm!"" "Give me a break!" "Trust you?" "When there's a girl bleeding on the floor?" "Is that what you want?" "Shit!" "He asked everyone to scream, to shout, to look desperate." "Janaina, Geisa and I, we all understood." "Everybody cooperated, by screaming and crying beyond the despair that we really felt." "I knew that nothing had happened, that it was a bluff, because the other women didn't jump out of the windows." "I think that anyone on a bus going someplace coming from college, going home, would have jumped." "Mr Officer, one is already down." "Another one is going down." "There's gonna be lots of blood." "Lots of blood." "He wasn't going to kill anyone because it wasn't in his nature." "Or else he'd had done if before in his life, as a street kid, lost in the world, without a thing." "He would have killed before if that was in his character." "At the last second, with the gun pointing at my head, he said: "I'm not gonna kill you, but I'm gonna shoot and I want everybody to scream."" "It was when I heard someone open a window." "I think it was Geisa." "I heard everybody screaming, I was screaming too." "We were putting on an act." "It was an act." "When I realised I was alive," "I started crying to get out of my system everything I had gone through that whole afternoon in his power." "That's when I realised I was OK, that I was alive." "You cry out of joy." "You realize it's all over." "He wanted people outside to see how desperate we were so he could get what he wanted." "Parallel conversations were going on." "One for the cameras and the people outside and one for us inside the bus." "He was in control of the situation." "He could change things any time he liked." "I'm gonna do this one in front of you for you to see." "Show me your gun now." "One!" "Two!" "Everybody was glued to the TV." ""He's grabbed her."" ""He's got her by the hair." "He's put a gun in her mouth."" "I wasn't too fussed." "I didn't know who it was." "I got closer to the TV." "It was like a magnet." ""I think one of the hostages is my wife."" "I ran to the scene." "The area was secured." "I looked around and went under the tape." ""Where are you going?"" "I said:" ""I think one of the hostages is my wife."" ""How do you know that?" "This is her ID card."" ""Stay here." "It will be all right."" ""It will be all right?" "Yeah." "I just hope the police don't fuck it up."" "Check it out!" "Don't you want a driver?" "Sergio, don't you want a driver?" "He's on his way." "It takes time." "There's no driver here." " Deputy, get over here!" " The driver is on his way." "Deputy!" "Deputy, for the love of God!" "Deputy, get over here!" "Get over here!" "You don't want to come here?" "You gonna quit kicking ass?" "You're scared, aren't you?" "You fucked with me and now you're scared!" "I'm gonna shoot her." "He's making his last moves, but he doesn't have it in him to kill an innocent person." "You draw up his psychological profile." "He wants to get out of there, he doesn't want to be arrested again." "When you're arrested, they take you to the police station." "They beat you up really bad when you get there." "If you try anything, it's even worse." "If you try to argue, it's worse." "They knock the shit out of us." "They do what they have to." "TYPICAL POLICE STATION RIO DE JANEIRO 2002" "We were at the 31st Precinct." "They brought us here beating us up on the way." "They kicked our butts." "It's very crowded in here." "There's no place to sleep." "They treat our families badly." "They give us rotten food." "We're constantly hassled." "I have leprosy." "There's no medical assistance." "People are fucked over, some are in here illegally when they should be back with their families." "There's no room in the prisons..." "There is, if you pay them off." "We'll probably be beaten up after you leave." "They beat us up." "These are subhuman conditions." "I've been in jail for over a year." "Neither my family in Paraguay nor the consulate knows about it." "They should be informed because I was wrongly accused." "The situation in Brazil is really bad." "And the prisoner's situation is the worst of all." "How can a prisoner be rehabilitated?" "How do they expect this country to be less violent?" "Treating prisoners the way they do?" "They're not gonna feel good when they leave jail." "They'll probably mug and kill more and more." "Take me, for example." "I'm in jail after I've done my time." "I'm still in custody." "This is crazy!" "Nothing works in this country." "They only care about the elections." "Reality is really sad." "What you see ain't a third of it." "The things we go through here, what we have to go through here, it's really like hell." "We would be better off dead than in here." "That is the truth." "It's better to be dead than to be in jail." "This ain't gonna do any good..." "When they've been arrested before, they are more violent." "It's harder to make them surrender because they know what jail is like." "Hey, this is because you're not getting it." "This is because you're trying to be a hero." "You're trying to be a smart-ass and you have no respect for the life of a citizen." "This is because you're letting a pretty girl like her die." "This is because if you were smart, none of this would happen." "Let's count together!" "Count to seven." "Boom!" "We lived together for six years." "She asked me to marry her the day before." "So, I was going to buy her flowers." "We were going to celebrate Valentine's Day together." "At the time, I didn't understand." "Why didn't the police shoot?" "If the police hadn't stopped me," "I think I would've done something crazy." "I could see she was desperate." "I was in agony." "I yelled: "Aren't you going to do anything?" "Do something!"" "I was sitting down the whole time during the incident." "Then he grabbed me and yelled to the cops:" ""Look how pretty this one is!" "If you don't like the other one, look at her."" "He showed me off at the window for everyone to see." "He stayed with me at the back window, pointing the gun at my forehead for everyone to see." "He told us to cry." "He told us to make things seem more dramatic than they really were." "There was a conversation going on inside the bus, but he didn't want people to notice." "I didn't really believe that he would shoot me." "But, eventually, I actually started to believe it." "The fine line between pretence and reality was broken." "And I believed he would kill me right there." "Then I leaned against him and took hold of his arm." "I asked him not to kill me." "When I realised he might kill me, I begged." "He got annoyed and said:" ""Shut up or I'll really kill you!" "So I looked at him and said:" ""Well, don't you want me to pretend?"" "Then he looked at me and I think he realised that there was some ambiguity in what he was doing." "Either he wanted us to put on an act or he really wanted to kill us." "And then it seemed to me that he felt bad about it." "He felt bad about the fact that I was asking him to comfort me, he who was willing to kill me, or pretending he would." "I didn't know if he was pretending or not, but even if he was pretending, an unexpected move could make the gun go off." "So even if it wasn't his intention to shoot me, it could happen." "He went to the front of the bus three minutes before his deadline." "The criminal said he would shoot everyone at six o'clock." "He said he would kill all the hostages." "He made a hostage write this message on the windscreen with lipstick." "There is a street just after Jardim Botanico." "If he could get the bus there, he would reach the forest." "He would be free." "He could take the hostages to the forest and send them in different directions." "He'd fire some shots, run..." "He'd be free." "He didn't have a plan." "He asked for two hand-grenades, then ammunition, then he wanted to set the bus on fire." "Probably to try to escape while the police would be busy with the hostages." "I don't know if you remember the robbery of Jobim's widow." "One criminal was caught, the other escaped." "Do you remember this?" "One of them escaped, handcuffed." "They couldn't find him in the forest." "After you reach the forest, no one can touch you." "It's eternal freedom for us." "The forest is where we grew up, where we lived." "From Barra da Tijuca to Botafogo." "That's our territory." "We rule in that place." "If he'd thought it through, nobody would have died and he would be free." "Geisa was very scared." "She couldn't even stand up." "Then she sat down and I said:" ""Geisa, he won't kill you." "He won't kill you."" "She said: "He's gonna kill me!" I said: "He won't."" "But she was still petrified." "I made her lean her head on my shoulder and hugged her." "I was trying to soothe her." "She seemed to calm down a little." "I told them that they should make an effort to get closer to him." ""Be his friend, you have to be his friend."" "I think the girl with the glasses understood it." "It seemed that she was doing stuff to create a bond between her and him, which was what we wanted." "Since we weren't really making contact with him we made sure that the hostages did." "I spoke to her, I talked to her and told her this:" ""You have to be calm."" ""You have to make him feel that everything is fine."" "At one stage when things were calmer," "I said to him:" ""You must really like your sister." "What's she like?"" ""She has long hair, a little shorter than yours."" "So I was trying to establish a friendly atmosphere, as if we weren't there." "As if that conversation was taking place elsewhere." "I was trying to take his mind off the situation, the feeling of being trapped." "I was trying to show that I cared about him, in some way, not only because I was scared of what he might do to me, but as a human being." "I don't know what led him to do that, to be who he was." "Now I think: "He was 21 or 22 years old, the same age I am now."" "At the time I was 19." "He had lived as long as I have." "What could have been happening inside his head?" "What happened that led him to do that, to be the person he was?" "BOA VISTA RIO DE JANEIRO" ""O Fluminense" newspaper, March 27, 1988" "The tragedy shocked the residents of Boa Vista." "Clarice was five months pregnant." "She was a cheerful, good-natured woman much admired by her customers and loved by children." "The victim left a trail of blood, from the counter to the street." "She fell out of the door and dragged herself onto the street, screaming for help that never came." "I can only imagine what it was like for Sandro to see those three guys attacking his mother, stabbing her." "I think he stayed by her side during the whole ordeal." "He saw the knife in my sister's back." "I'm sure he did." "My sister came rolling from the kitchen to the bar." "She fell onto her back, it pushed the knife in deeper." "He saw it all." "He only called me after she was already lying on the floor." "He said: "Auntie, come and help Mom." "She's hurt"." "Incident report the body was found on the street in front of the victim's shop." "A kitchen knife with a wooden handle was in the victim's back, at the right shoulder." "The baby stirred in her belly." "I thought she was alive because the baby was moving a lot." "Maybe it was the lack of oxygen." "I don't know." "The baby moved so I asked people to take her to a doctor." "But she was dead." "We were talking as if we were friends." "Then Gloria, who was near us, asked me, at that moment, to put around his neck a chain with an image of the Virgin Mary." "Then I asked him:" ""Do you believe in the Virgin Mary?"" "That was the saint in the pendant." ""No, I only believe in God."" "Then, I asked him:" ""Do you know who's the greatest victim in this bus?" "Of this incident?"" "He stopped and stared at the floor, thinking about it." "Then, I said: "You." He thought about that." "It was as if he had just grasped the situation." "I said: "Sandro, do you want to come to mom's funeral?" "He took a while to answer." "He went to pee and came back." "I said: "Do you want to say goodbye to mommy before she goes to heaven?"" ""Auntie, I'm gonna play marbles." Like nothing had happened." ""No, Auntie." "I'm staying." "I'm flying a kite." He had many excuses." ""I'm flying a kite." He hadn't forgotten what had happened." "He wanted to stay as far away as he could from that neighbourhood." "He wanted to be far from the place where he saw everything happen." "He would make a decision, then he'd change his mind, decide he didn't want to exchange the hostages." "He just wanted to stay there." "He said he didn't trust the cops." "He said he knew they would kill him." "If he didn't watch out, they'd kill him." ""I'm gonna die anyway." "I've got nothing to lose."" "When I got home that night, my mom said that" "Sandro had run away, she hadn't seen him all day." "He went onto the streets and we never saw him again." "Whatever the outcome... the hostages' chances of getting out of there unharmed were far greater than his." "Dead or in jail, he was going to be worse off." "I'm against what he did with that bus." "I'm against what the police did too." "It's all violence, right?" "Nothing can justify what happened." "But he wasn't going to kill anyone in that bus." "He was incapable of it." "He never killed anyone, he never would." "You see, he threatened them, but he wasn't going to kill anyone." "He showed me how to open the bus door." "He was very patient." ""You pull this lever."" "I asked: "Like that?" "No, pull it this way."" ""It's wrong." "Pull it like this." Then I opened the door." "I thought that the situation was going to be resolved positively." "It seemed he disliked Geisa more than the others." "That's how it seemed to me." "During the whole time, it looked like he was angrier with her." "She lied to Sandro." "She told him a lie, that she had a brother in prison." "Sandro found out it was a lie." "This must have caused the opposite effect of the Stockholm Syndrome." "He lost trust in her." "It seemed that if anyone had to die, it would be Geisa." "On the bus she said that Damiana was her mother." "I read Damiana's diaries and found out that she told him her brother had been in prison, or was still in prison." "She said that the prison officers would come to his cell and beat him up." "Damiana said she knew what that was like." "He asked:" ""Where is your brother being held?"" "Geisa didn't know what to say." "In fact, she knew everything about my uncle's life." "But my uncle never stayed in one prison for long." "That's why Geisa didn't know how to answer." "There's no way I would have got caught." "To the forest!" "I know the forest so well, I'd find a way out." "You see?" "I'd have tried something." "Son of a bitch!" "No way they'd get me back to jail." "We'd all go to hell together." "I heard him say: "Let's go for a walk."" "I felt all the emotion, the relief that it was all over." "I didn't know what was going to happen." "That there was going to be shooting." "I said: "Geisa, he is not going to kill you."" "She said: "He'll kill me!" I insisted: "He won't."" "If he'd wanted to kill anyone, he'd have done it in the beginning to show power." "I remember Geisa crying and Sandro pointing a gun to her head." "When he decided to take Geisa outside, nobody was talking to him." "Not even the cops." "He simply made up his mind." "I was talking on the phone when I suddenly realised that he was leaving the bus." "Sandro leaving the bus wasn't good for the police." "Quite the opposite." "A static situation should never be allowed to become mobile." "If he had walked down the street with Geisa he could have been lynched, or he could have taken more hostages." "We didn't expect him to leave the bus." "We thought it was very unlikely, with all those guns around him." "We thought he had realised that any attempt to escape would put his life in danger." "At that time, there were a dozen photographers kneeling in front of me." "When he got off the bus holding a terrified woman, he thought he could use her despair to convince us to let him go away." "He wanted to get out onto the street with her, run away and try to escape." "He was holding onto the girl, but he just wanted to get out." "Negotiate with the police?" "What?" "He was out of his mind." "He said he'd kill anyone who got in his way, that he wanted to get away." "What could those cops do?" "Where would Sandro go?" "Would they shoot him?" "Would there be crossfire with many victims?" "He was going to give himself in." "There were lots of cameras." "He'd come out alive." "He thought:" ""Who would kill me on TV?"" "No one." "What was that policeman thinking?" "Sandro had his back turned, so he took advantage." "But the machine gun's bolt wasn't armed." "He knew that if he released the bolt," "Sandro would spot him." "When he was about a foot from Sandro's head, he released the bolt." "Unfortunately, Sandro spotted him." "He had a hostage, a gun with three bullets, and Marcelo charging him with a gun pointed to his face." "What would be the normal reaction?" "If someone tried to shoot him, his finger was on the trigger." "He should have used the hostage as shield and fired at his attacker." "Even though he knew that the other cops could kill him." "This was the obvious thing to do:" "turn around and fire at the policeman." "Mancha wasn't man enough to blow the cop's head off." "That movement of his head was enough to make Marcelo miss both shots." "At that moment, people realised how unprepared we were." "All the things we asked for, equipment, training, courses..." "It fell to the ground at that moment." "I don't think that Marcelo received any specific orders." ""When he leaves the bus, you shoot."" "I think it was an implicit order." "What did Marcelo do?" "He did what he was taught." "He took the initiative." "Unfortunately, that day we were going to lose." "He missed by an inch." "They're supposed to be trained to deal with these things." "We all make mistakes." "But these are human lives." "It's serious." "Very serious." "The cop came firing at him and he shot the girl." "If he'd shot the police and got away, I'd have applauded him." "If he'd killed two or three cops, all his friends would have applauded him." "But he took the weaker option." "It was the most chaotic moment, because I thought Marcelo had shot him." "So I tried to grab him, to pull him towards me." "Why?" "Because I thought his fingers spasms could pull the trigger and kill Geisa." "So I jumped on him, thinking he was dead, or almost dead." "But to my surprise, he wasn't dead." "I pulled him up and he was alive." "I leant over him and Geisa to try to get his gun in case he fired more shots." "He had fired once as they were falling, and twice more when they were on the ground." "When I got hold of him, he shot her." "Only one cop acted at that moment, when Sandro fell to the floor and started shooting at Geisa." "He was the only officer who tried to take the gun from Sandro and save the hostage's life." "He's the only one who deserves any credit:" "Captain Batista." "I knew she had been hit when I saw her." "From the look in her eyes, I knew a vital organ had been hit." "Son of a bitch!" "I only had time to take the camera off the tripod and run." "Crowds came from everywhere to lynch Sandro." "They wanted revenge." "They wanted to take a little piece of Sandro home, as a souvenir." "I knew that if I ran, no policeman would try to stop me." "I saw a soldier beating him up." "I managed to kick him." "But when I kicked him, there were lots of other people who wanted to kill him." "Everybody felt the same way." "I didn't have time to do much." "I went to kick him, but the soldiers stopped me." "I wish I'd been closer." "I wanted to kill him at the time." "I first saw her when a soldier, a tall firefighter went past carrying her." "I looked at him." "He was much taller than me." "He was strong, but he seemed to be struggling to carry her." "I touched her." "I touched her feet." "Then I saw the blood stains." "A big blood stain on her front." "And when I felt her skin, it was very cold." "Her eyes were turned up and I realised she was dead." "They went at him to kill." "The crowd was pushing the police and yelling:" ""Kill him!" "Kill him!"" "The guy died in front of everyone." "Thousands of people watched it." "The whole of Brazil saw him die." "The police thought that Sandro had been hit." "The blood on Sandro's head made them believe he was hit." "Could this have led the police to execute him?" "Yes." "I wouldn't bet against it." "The officers told me that Sandro was extremely agitated..." "He was struggling, he shattered the police car's windscreen with his feet." "He bit the police officers, he broke an officer's arm." "They say that's why they had to suffocate him, to make him faint." "As for Sandro's death, I have no opinion on the matter." "I don't intend to discuss it." "The crowd wanted to see a show." "At the end of the show, the bad guy dies." "That's common in our society." "The police killed him by asphyxiation." "They suffocated him." "Who in that situation wouldn't kill that hijacker?" "As well as being a cop, a policeman is a human being, who is there watching..." "They too have feelings of hatred and frustration, just like other people, who are powerless to act." "But policemen do have power." "That's normal for them, cowardice." "Cowardice is what they're good at." "Just think of it." "They caught him alive and killed him." "You see?" "They love that." "If they could, they'd kill everybody they arrested." "But when there's people watching, they can't." "The police killed Sandro's friends in Candelaria." "Now, they'd finished the job." "This story comes full circle." "The police do the dirty work that society doesn't want to see, but that the public hopes will get done in some dark corner." "Society wants to get rid of all Sandros." "We want all Sandros to vanish." "We don't want to face reality." "We cannot bear it." "His invisibility was restored by the police force." "Invisibility is perfectly achieved through death." "They killed him because they're used to killing." "They know they won't be punished because who stands up for the Sandros?" "Who will stand up for the Sandros?" "No one." "I think I have forgiven Sandro for what happened." "But I know that's easy to say, because he isn't here, for me to say it to his face:" ""I forgive you."" "Can I forgive him?" "Yes." "I can forgive him for what he did to us, but I cannot forgive him for having shot Geisa." "I can't forgive him for that." "Geisa was 20 years old." "She had her whole life ahead of her." "We were living our simple lives, the way we always did." "We were quiet in our corner, happy, making plans." "And it all ended in a pool of blood." "Today we leave our homes uncertain if we'll be back." "They left home to run some errands." "And she died on the way." "She died on the way." "I really wanted to bury my nephew." "But what would happen if I said I was Sandro's aunt?" "They would come after me at my house, at my work..." "There would be lots of reporters." "I didn't want that." "I dressed him in a white shirt." "And I told him:" ""This is not what you wanted." ""Your dream was to work and raise a family." ""But you took the wrong path." ""This isn't what I wanted for you." ""But Jesus will forgive you." ""God bless you." "Rest in peace."" "During the Brazil v. England game, this guy came and told me:" ""Do you want a gun?" ""Let's rob this flat together."" "I was with him and Tadeu." ""There's lots of gold there."" ""They're very rich."" "I said: "I don't want to do it."" "And my friend said:" ""I don't want to do it either."" "We left him talking there."