A stunning young Brazilian influencer was hauled from her family home in the dead of night and gunned down on the pavement while her father looked on, just a week after a judge let her walk free from prison.
Evelyn Lima Dantas, 21, posted travel clips, beauty videos and glimpses of her everyday life to tens of thousands of followers. In the early hours of 16 September, she was executed outside a house in Mãe do Rio, a town in the northern state of Pará.
Two men forced their way into the property at around 3.30 am. They pinned her father to the floor, dragged Evelyn outside and shot her repeatedly on the sidewalk. Before they fled, they spray-painted the letters “TCP”, the mark of Terceiro Comando Puro, a powerful Rio de Janeiro crime faction, across the front of the house.
Neighbours heard the gunfire. When police arrived, they found her body on the pavement, covered with a sheet. Her father was later seen trying to wash the blood from the street before officers stopped him so forensic teams could work.
Dantas had only been released on 9 September. She had been held in preventive detention after police named her as a possible helper in the 29 July killing of retired military police sergeant Antônio Anildo Alves da Silva, 56, who was shot as he left a supermarket. Investigators suspected she provided logistical support. She had not been convicted.
Local commanders have already floated the grim possibility of a “queima de arquivo”, the silencing of someone who talked. Officers say information she gave after her arrest helped police operations in the municipality. She had also previously been arrested on suspicion of drug trafficking.
On social media, she appeared every inch the carefree content creator: blonde hair, polished makeup, trips and daily-life clips that built a following reported at more than 24,000 on one platform and as high as 150,000 across accounts. Those profiles were deactivated after her death.
No arrests have been announced. Detectives are studying CCTV of the getaway car and interviewing witnesses. Police have not confirmed the TCP tag means the Rio faction itself ordered the hit.
The contrast could not be starker: a young woman who filled her feeds with sunshine and selfies, dead on a pavement seven days after a court decided she could go home.
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