Police Suspected In Rio Massacre

Elite police units searched two squalid suburbs Saturday as part of the investigation into Rio's bloodiest massacre in memory. Two suspects described as rogue police officers remained at large.

State Gov. Rosinha Matheus offered a $1,900 reward for information leading to the capture of the gunmen who went on the killing spree Thursday that left 30 dead, including five teenagers shot while playing video games at a bar.

"We want this case to be rigorously investigated because it can't go unpunished," Matheus said Saturday on her weekly radio program. "As a mother I'm shocked. Only monsters are capable of that."

Elite units of the Rio state police, aided by federal agents, set up road blocks and searched houses in an impoverished area known as the Baixada, a drab sprawl of towns on Rio's north side where the shootings took place.

On Friday, state officials released composite sketches of two men believed to be police officers with links to death squads — shadowy associations, often made up of off-duty or retired officers, hired by local businessmen to kill undesirables.

Marcelo Itagiba, Rio's state security secretary, said the crime was likely the work of police angered by the arrest of eight officers caught on film while disposing of two bodies.

But Justice Minister Marcio Thomaz Bastos said it was too early to say for sure that corrupt police carried out the killings.

"We must follow all lines of investigation so nobody gets away, whoever they may be," Bastos said.

According to witnesses, the shooting started around 10 p.m. when four men got out of a silver Volkswagen and opened fire on the crowd at a street corner bar in Nova Iguacu. Fifteen people were found dead in and around the bar, and three more died in the hospital Friday.

The gunmen left the scene, firing randomly and killing two bicyclists along the road, then killed 10 people more in Queimados, a neighboring town.

Victims were buried Saturday, as families wept and held up banners calling for justice. A memorial mass for the victims was planned late Saturday at the Santo Antonio Cathedral in Nova Iguacu.

Nova Iguacu Mayor Lindberg Farias said death squads were nothing new in his city, one of the poorest in the region.

"Everybody knows that deaths squads operate in the Baixada, including the names of those who are linked to death squads," said Farias in an interview on CBN radio.

Earlier this year, a death squad was blamed for killing a family of four in Nova Iguacu after one of the sons was accused of stealing bicycle.

"What impresses me most is the point to which Rio de Janeiro has sunk. Besides shootout between bandits, the drug war, we are now seeing a fight of police against police where in truth the only losers are the population," Farias said.

The homicide rate across Rio de Janeiro state is among the highest in the world at around 50 per 100,000 residents. In the Baixada, it climbs to 76 per 100,000.

Police death squads in Brazil caused an international uproar 12 years ago, when eight street children were killed as they slept outside a church in downtown Rio.