Residents of Vila Cruzeiro gather bodies after more than 130 were killed in pre-dawn assault
D
ay had yet to break over Vila Cruzeiro but already dozens of corpses were splayed out along the favela’s main drag after more than 130 people were killed during the deadliest police operation in Rio history: grotesquely disfigured, blood-smeared bodies that had been dragged out of nearby forests and dumped on blue tarpaulins and black plastic sheets covering the street.
“I’ve brought 53 down myself … there must be another 12 or 15 up there in the bush,” said Erivelton Vidal Correia, the head of the local residents’ association, bleary-eyed from a sleepless night spent hauling bullet-riddled local men down from the hills.
Correia broke down as he described his relentless nocturnal hunt for the dead after Rio suffered what is being called one of the biggest police massacres in modern Brazilian history.
