A teen's killing stirs Black Lives Matter protests in Brazil

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — When Rafaela Matos saw police helicopters over her favela and heard gunshots, she fell to her knees and asked God to protect her son, João Pedro. Then she called the boy to make sure he was OK.

“Be calm,” João Pedro wrote back, explaining that he was at his aunt’s house and everything was fine, Rafaela told The Associated Press. Minutes after he sent the message, police burst in and shot the 14-year-old in the stomach with a high-caliber rifle at close range.

João Pedro Matos Pinto was one of more than 600 people killed by police in the state of Rio de Janeiro in the first months of this year. That’s almost double the number of people killed by police over the same period in the entire U.S., which has 20 times Rio’s population. Like João Pedro, most of those killed in Rio were black or biracial and lived in the city’s poorest neighborhoods, or favelas.

As the Black Lives Matter movement brings hundreds of thousands to the streets around the world, demonstrators outraged by João Pedro’s death one month ago have been organizing the largest anti-police brutality demonstrations in years on the streets of Rio.

https://apnews.com/8bfe3a86aa1db5b9671d9d41be8617b7?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningwire&pnespid=g.lnseVRWBWNtXuIQ6X90K5Ho0DWqUR5O8X637Ru