Paulo Sergio Lima is less than 30 years old, the man who held 17 hostages at gunpoint, including elderly people and children, on board a bus in the Novo Rio bus station, in the center of Rio de Janeiro.
At the end of three very long hours of tension, and after having refused several times to negotiate with the agents of the Special Operations Battalion of the police, the young man gave in, handed himself over to the police, freeing all the hostages, who beyond the shock, they appeared in good condition.
The reconstructions speak of a criminal on the run, with two precedents for armed robbery, already in semi-freedom, who grew up in Rocinha, one of the main favelas of the city, controlled by the fearsome criminal organization of the Vermelho Command.
The images of him show the absent gaze of a boy, barefoot, in shorts and a pink shirt, as he is arrested and loaded aboard a security forces vehicle.
The causes that pushed Paulo Sergio Lima to shoot two people, one of them seriously injured, before taking control of the bus and putting himself in a serious situation, much bigger than himself, are still unknown.
Witnesses said that while he remained on board hunted with his prey, he followed what was happening outside through media images on his mobile phone, thus discovering that in addition to the negotiators, snipers were also ready to take action.
That's why he obscured the view by closing all the curtains.
The news speaks of a desperate man, a man adrift.
Among the hypotheses put forward is also that of an attack on the bus which ended badly, as has already happened in the 'wonderful city' in the past.
For the moment all we know about Paolo Lima is that in the early afternoon he purchased a ticket to go to Minas Gerais.
He did it by paying with cash, perhaps to leave no trace and put a lot of distance between him and whoever was looking for him.
"I was born a second time," said Daiana Carelli, 34, among the passengers who got off the bus before the kidnapping.
In fact, the bus left Rio de Janeiro at 2.30pm, headed for Juiz de Fora, with 37 passengers on board, but shortly afterwards returned to the station because the air conditioning had broken.
It was at this point that Lima shot outside the bus, hitting two people on the walkway of one of the central platforms, sowing general panic.
Then he got back on the bus with the hostages for another three very long hours.
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