Heloísa dos Santos Silva, 3 years old, remains hospitalized in a very serious condition at the Intensive Care Center (CTI) of Hospital Adão Pereira Nunes, in Duque de Caxias, Baixada Fluminense. The girl was shot in the spine and head during an approach by Federal Highway Police (PRF) agents to the family’s car last Thursday (7).
Little Heloísa was accompanied by her parents, her aunt and her older sister, when shots were fired at the vehicle that was passing on Arco Metropolitano, a highway built around the metropolitan region of Rio.
Read more: 7-year-old girl is shot while leaving school in the city of Mesquita (RJ)
Relatives say the shots came from PRF agents. The family, who lives in Petrópolis, in the Serrana Region, was returning from Itaguaí, in the Metropolitan Region, where they went to spend the Sete de Setembro holiday.
The agents claimed that the car’s license plate showed as stolen and after hearing a gunshot, they reacted. The action took place near Seropédica, in Baixada Fluminense.
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Heloísa suffered a cardiorespiratory arrest during the early hours of this Thursday (14), according to the latest medical bulletin. The condition was reversed by the medical team after six minutes. However, the child’s health condition remains very serious.
Victims
Heloísa dos Santos Silva was the 18th child shot in the Metropolitan Region of Rio de Janeiro this year, according to a Fogo Cruzado survey. Last Tuesday (12) a seven-year-old girl was shot as she left school in the Rocha Sobrinho neighborhood, in Mesquita, Baixada Fluminense.
The Futuro Exterminado platform shows that more than 600 children and teenagers have been shot in Rio de Janeiro in the last seven years. With 138 victims, children represent 22% of those shot: 38 died and 100 were injured. According to the survey, 48% of the total number of victims were affected in police operations.
:: Fogo Cruzado: at least 600 children and teenagers were shot in RJ in the last seven years ::
Source: BdF Rio de Janeiro
Editing: Clívia Mesquita
