Justice makes defendants three suspected of killing lawyer in downtown Rio | Rio de Janeiro

Rio – The Court accepted the complaint from the Public Ministry of Rio de Janeiro (MPRJ) and made defendants, this Monday (29), Cezar Daniel Mondêgo de Souza, Eduardo Sobreira de Moraes and military police officer Leandro Machado da Silva – all three were indicted for the execution of lawyer Rodrigo Marinho Crespo, shot dead in the center of Rio on February 26. The decision was made by judge Cariel Bezerra Patriota, from the 3rd Jury Court of the Capital. The three are arrested and will be charged with qualified homicide.

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In the decision, the magistrate also ordered the suspension of firearm possession and the removal of Leandro Machado from the PM.

The investigation was completed by the Civil Police and sent on the 24th of this month to the MPRJ. According to investigations, the three participated in monitoring the victim and met before and after the crime. One of them even provided the car used on the day of the murder.

“Cezar Mondego and Eduardo Sobreira acted, with awareness and desire for the objective, in monitoring the victim for days to guarantee the ‘best moment’ for the lawyer’s execution, and Leandro Machado, in turn, contributed, voluntarily and consciously as for the purpose, with the rental of the vehicle used by the other defendants for monitoring and surveillance of the victim”, the judge wrote in the decision.

Patriota also maintained the preventive detention of criminals, in order to “prevent the defendants from escaping or hindering the investigations, in addition to ensuring the maintenance of public order.”

“The incident was carried out during the day, in the heart of the city of Rio de Janeiro, close to the headquarters of the OAB, MPRJ and DPERJ, during business hours, on a street with intense movement of people and vehicles, and an extensive number of shots fired ( 21)”, he highlighted.

The motivation for the murder is still considered uncertain, but the Homicide Police are investigating whether the victim’s connections with the online betting sector could be related to the crime.

After the arrests of the three suspects, a new investigation was opened to find out if there were others involved in the murder. On April 9, police officers carried out search and seizure warrants against Adilson Oliveira Coutinho Filho, known as Adilsinho, current patron of Salgueiro, and nine other people, including four military police officers.

Agent Vitor Hugo Henrichs Mello was arrested red-handed during the operation because he was carrying a higher caliber ammunition magazine than permitted.

According to investigations, he rented a vehicle from the Horizonte 16 rental company, the same one where the cars used to monitor the lawyer were rented in the days before his death. Vitor Hugo was assigned to the 15th BPM (Duque de Caxias), the same as military police officer Leandro Machado da Silva. Two other PMs investigated were authorized to remove vehicles that were rented from the rental company.

The crime

Lawyer Rodrigo Marinho Crespo was hit by 21 gunshots, fired by a hooded man, around 5pm on February 26th. According to information from the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s complaint, the victim was executed because his professional activities “disturbed” the criminal organization that operated online betting games.

“These facts strongly suggest that the group responsible for the execution had the intention of sending a clear message, a significant “message” to competitors, as well as affronting the Democratic Rule of Law itself. This form of execution demonstrates an absence of fear of acting of state institutions responsible for criminal prosecution or, even, the demonstration of infiltration by its agents in the State itself, with the intention of capturing the state structure’, says the court decision.