⁍ Ricardo Moraes, a veteran photographer who for 11 years has documented for Reuters life in Rio de Janeiro’s often dangerous slums.
⁍ He heard a radio report of a hostage situation in Sao Carlos, a sprawling tangle of hillside homes near the city center.
⁍ Images he would capture would appear on the front pages of Brazil’s two largest newspapers.
⁍ They resonated in a city fed up with violence, where residents say shootouts among aggressive criminal gangs and a notoriously deadly police force are common.
– Photographer Ricardo Moraes rushed to Rio de Janeiro on Thursday after hearing reports of a hostage situation in the city’s Sao Carlos slum. There, he found a woman weeping over the body of her husband, Davi Barboza, who police say was a drug trafficker and who had been shot to death by police. The woman identified herself only as Juliana and told Moraes she was four months pregnant with the couple’s first child. “I want to ask whoever is in that life to get out,” she said, choking back tears, per Reuters. “Think of your family because it’s very difficult for us. I don’t know how I’m going to go back home and not see him anymore.” Moraes, a veteran Reuters photographer who has documented life in Rio’s slums for 11 years, says he never expected such an emotional scene when he arrived at the scene. “But ever since the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Brazil, I’ve been hearing a phrase which I thought about when I began to photograph Juliana: everyone is loved by someone,” he says. “Everyone is loved by someone.” Barboza’s body was found on a staircase behind police, who had surrounded the building hours earlier after receiving a tip that a drug trafficker was taking a family of three hostage in an apartment building. Police say they exchanged fire with the hostage-takers, who surrendered hours later, but one of the women was still missing.
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-violence-shooting/a-picture-and-its-story-the-despair-of-a-rio-widow-in-a-city-struggling-with-violence-idUSKBN25P0UK