Woman rolled dead man into bank in Rio de Janeiro – arrested

– Uncle Paulo, are you listening? You must sign here!

The words come from Erika, 42, and are addressed to a dead man she rolled into the bank.

Now she is caught and an entire country is in shock.

Ambulance and eventually police are called on Tuesday afternoon to a bank in Rio de Janeiro.

In a wheelchair sits Paulo Roberto Braga, 68. He is dead.

Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes, 42, says he is her uncle and during the visit acted as if he were alive.

Everything is caught on video by the staff, who become suspicious when the woman wants to take out a loan in his name for the equivalent of just over SEK 35,000.

The mobile film is now spreading in Brazil and is causing people to be shocked.

– Uncle Paulo, are you listening? You must sign here. If you don’t sign, it won’t work. I can’t sign for you, says the woman according to CNN Brasil.

“He is very pale”

She holds up the man’s head, which rolls back and forth several times during the clip. When she grips his hand with a pen and is about to sign the document, one of the employees protests:

– I don’t think this is legal. He doesn’t look well. He is very pale.

– That’s how he is, replies Erika.

Then turns back to the man in the wheelchair.

– If you don’t feel well, I can take you to the hospital. Do you want to go back to the hospital again?

The defense: Lived

Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes was arrested on the spot and is now suspected of fraud and breach of confidentiality, writes the Washington Post.

She claims in her defense that Paulo Roberto Braga was alive when they got to the bank. This is contradicted by surveillance cameras from earlier occasions during the afternoon. Then she rolls him around in a shopping center and a garage without him being seen to move once, writes CNN Brasil.

– Anyone who watches the film can see that he is dead. She knew he was dead, says police chief Fabio Souza, according to the Washington Post.

“Some kind of kinship”

The coroner will later determine that the 68-year-old has been dead for at least two hours when he is wheeled into the bank.

Now the police are investigating his relationship with the arrested woman.

– She calls herself his niece and his caretaker. According to our investigations, there is some kind of kinship. Now we want to identify other family members, says Fabio Souza.

The case is now widely discussed in Brazilian social media. Some make fun of themselves and create memes, some blame the politicians and lament Brazil’s moral decay.

Others move out to defend the country.

“Brazil is not like this. Extreme cases are everywhere in the world,” writes an X user according to the Washington Post.