RIO DE JANEIRO--A popular Rio de Janeiro city councilwoman who was an outspoken critic of police killings of poor residents in shantytowns was gunned down in what police, prosecutors and even drug gang leaders said on Thursday looked like a political assassination.
Marielle Franco, 38, a rising star in the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL), was killed along with her driver on Rio's dangerous north side around 9:30 p.m. Wednesday night. Her press secretary survived the shooting.
Just weeks ago, the federal government decreed that Brazil's army would take over all security operations through the end of the year in Rio, where murders have risen sharply. Franco, part of a commission to oversee the military intervention, harshly criticized the move on Sunday, saying it could worsen police violence against residents.
"It is far too soon to say, but we are obviously looking at this as a murder in response to her political work, that is a main theory," said a Rio de Janeiro public prosecutor, who spoke on condition that he not be named as he was not authorized to discuss the case.
Rivaldo Barbosa, head of Rio's Civil Police, told reporters that "one of the possibilities in analysis is, yes, an execution." He did not speculate on who may have been responsible.
An investigator with the city's police force went further, saying the prime motive appeared to be Franco's calling out police for allegedly killing innocents in their constant battles with drug gangs.
Political violence is common in Brazil - but typically in smaller or more impoverished cities. In the months before the 2016 city council elections in Baixada Fluminense, a hardscrabble region the size of Denmark that surrounds Rio, at least 13 politicians or candidates were murdered before ballots were cast.
Franco, who was raised and lived in the Mare complex of slums, long one of Rio's more dangerous areas, received over 46,500 votes in the 2016 election. That total was only bested by four of 51 council members.
On Sunday on her Facebook page, Franco decried what she alleged to be the police killing of two boys during a police raid in an area called Acari. "We must scream out so that all know what is happening in Acari right now. Rio's police are terrorizing and violating those who live in Acari," Franco wrote. "This week two youth were killed and tossed into a ditch. Today, the police were in the street threatening those who live there. This has been going on forever and will only be worse with a military intervention."
