A Brazilian civil servant, 27, killed his own 4-year-old son with two shots to the head, informed the military police of Piedade de Caratinga, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Minas Gerais.
According to authorities, Djalma Isaías Ribeiro, went to the child’s grandmother’s house and asked her to take the son so that he would buy him a toy car since the boy had his birthday last Saturday.
Instead Ribeiro took the child to a thicket, which is about two miles from the city center, known as Rio Preto stream. From there, he called several residents in the city and told them he was going to kill his son.
Soldier Leonardo Batista told reporters that when police arrived on the scene, they encountered the man with the child in his arms and a gun to his own head.
“We negotiated for him to put his son and the gun on the floor. After a long talk he ended up complying,” said the soldier.
When officers went to pick up the child, however, they found out that the boy already been shot twice in the head.
“The father had killed the child but kept in his even after our arrival. At no time we were able to see that the child had been shot,” said the policeman. One of the bullets only grazed the boy’s head but the other pierced the skull.
The police rushed the boy to the city’s Health Center, but he arrived there already dead. Just after being arrested the father told police that he had killed his son because he hadn’t been invited to the kid’s birthday party last Saturday.
According to Batista, “He always takes the child on weekends, but due to the party, he wasn’t able to go out with the son,”
The child’s parents, according to authorities, are separated for about five months. Since the separation the mother has received several death threats from the ex-husband.
“We even have a police report of an assault committed by the man last December,” said the police. The man was imprisoned at the time, but was released on bail.
According to people who knew Ribeiro, he was unhappy with the separation and had bought the gun in São Paulo keeping it in the woods where the crime occurred.
On Monday, he took a taxi with a child and went to the thicket. He even called an ex-wife’s friend to take her to the woods because he could not accept the end of the relationship and he would kill the son as an act of revenge.
The 5,500 residents of Piedade de Caratinga, in the Vale do Rio Doce, are shocked and upset by the crime. The suspect has been taken to the town’s police station.
