Enlarge image
Police car in Brazil (symbolic image): did a man die from tear gas?
Photo: IMAGO/Jose Lucena / IMAGO/TheNews2
A case of police violence in the town of Umbaúba in Brazil has caused horror.
A video circulating on social media shows two police officers forcibly holding a man in the smoke-filled trunk of a car.
White smoke rises from the car, apparently tear gas.
The victim can be heard screaming, the man wriggling his legs sticking out of the trunk.
Then he doesn't move anymore.
The police say the 38-year-old behaved aggressively and defied the police officers.
The emergency services calmed him down.
When the police wanted to take the man to the station, his health had deteriorated.
He was taken to the hospital, where his death was confirmed.
Outrage in Brazil
A preliminary autopsy showed the man died of respiratory failure, said George Fernandes, a spokesman for the Sergipe State Forensic Institute.
The Brazilian news portal "G1" quotes the victim's family.
Accordingly, the man was mentally ill.
The nephew is said to have observed the act.
The victim's widow said, "It was indeed a crime, they acted with cruelty to kill him."
The images sparked outrage on social media.
Dozens of people gathered for a protest in Umbaúba on Wednesday, where they blocked a road and burned car tyres.
The brutality shown in the video shocked society, said the independent Brazilian forum for public safety.
"Police officers turned a car into a gas chamber and executed a mentally ill man," politician and human rights activist Renata Souza tweeted. "There are no words in the face of this inhumanity."
President Jair Bolsonaro said he would check with the police to find out what happened.
The federal police launched an investigation.
The forensic medicine must submit a final, more detailed report to the federal police within ten days.
The incident came just days after highway patrol officers were involved in an operation in Rio de Janeiro that left more than 20 people dead.
Police said they had no choice but to use deadly force.
Local residents disagree with this representation.
ptz/AP
