RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Twenty days into a mega operation, Lázaro Barbosa, 32, was killed by police on Monday, June 28, after another clash with officers of the task force set up to track him down. Police laid siege to a neighborhood in Águas Lindas de Goiás where an ex-wife of the fugitive lives.
The arrest was announced by Goiás Governor Ronaldo Caiado and the death was confirmed by the local police.
“As I said, it was a matter of time until our police, the most prepared in the country, would capture the murderer Lázaro Barbosa. Congratulations to our security forces. You are a source of great pride for our people! Goiás is not gangster Disneyland,” Caiado said on Twitter.
After being shot, he was rushed to a hospital in the region, but succumbed to his injuries. The shooting exchange took place in Itamaracá, in Águas Lindas de Goiás, a region where the criminal was being looked for since Sunday night. Residents of Itamaracá say they saw the criminal at around 9 PM on Sunday and called the police.
Lázaro ignored negotiations attempted by officers to convince him to turn himself in. During the early morning, a siege was set up in the region, with the support of helicopters and tracking dogs.
In the morning, shortly after 8 AM, Lázaro’s ex-wife was taken to the Regional Civil Police Station. According to witnesses, the criminal was in her house when the police were called. Lázaro reportedly escaped through the woods in the back of the house. Also on Monday morning, the task force officers were serving court warrants.
Lázaro Barbosa Sousa had been the target of a manhunt since June 9, mobilizing 270 police officers, helicopters, sniffer dogs, drones, and cavalry. During the search for the serial killer, which completes 20 days, he passed through a series of locations.
The hunt began in Cêilandia, in the Federal District, where the criminal killed 4 people from the same family, according to the police. From there he fled to Cocalzinho de Goiás, where he was seen in the rural areas of Edilândia and Girassol.
During this time, Lázaro broke into properties, took hostages, exchanged gunfire with police officers, and wounded people, including a police officer. Many residents of the area where the searches took place left their homes in fear. The police believed that the criminal was finding food in some of these houses and using them as hiding places.
Lázaro took advantage of the dense forest and the rivers and streams to move around. He had a preference for moving in the water, so as not to leave any tracks. The criminal knew the region well and hid deep in the vegetation – he had used a coconut palm to hide and escape from the police.
Lázaro has a long criminal record, has escaped from prison 3 times, and has been accused of several crimes since 2007. He is accused of shooting and stabbing 3 people in the rural area of Ceilândia on June 9. The dead were Claudio Vidal de Oliveira, 48, and his sons Gustavo Marques Vidal, 21, and Carlos Eduardo Marques Vidal, 15.
The fugitive is also pointed out as responsible for the kidnapping of Claudio’s wife, Cleonice Marques de Andrade. Her body was found on June 12 on the edge of a stream, near the house where the family lived.
Born in the Bahia town of Barra do Mendes, 530 kilometers from Salvador, Lázaro was convicted of murder in his hometown at the age of 20. In 2011, already in Ceilândia, he was convicted of rape and robbery with use of a weapon. He was arrested in 2018, in Águas Lindas de Goiás, but escaped from prison a few months later.
Fake profile
The criminal used a stolen cell phone from one of his victims to create a fake profile on social networks to read news about his escape. According to information from Metrópoles news website, the police monitored the cell phone taken by the suspect on June 15, when he broke into a farm and took 3 people from the same family hostage. The victims were rescued in an operation that resulted in gunfire exchange.
According to the report, after escaping from the police siege at the farm, Lázaro kept the cell phone until June 18 while hiding in the woods.