On the afternoon of Saturday, April 14, a military police officer investigating the killing of a journalist was shot to death by two people on a motorcycle in the city of Ponta Porã in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul on the border with Paraguay, reported the news site Dourados Agora.
According to the news site Grande Fm, the police agent, Paulo César Santos Magalhães, who was part of a special group against organized crime, was responsible for the investigation of the killing of journalist Paulo Rocaro, who in February was shot to death, also by two gunmen riding a motorcycle.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has warned of the dangers for journalists working along the the border between Brazil and Paraguay, as Paraguayan reporter Cándido Figueredo recently received death threats while working in a border city.
The police officer was riding a motorcycle in Ponta Porã and stopped at a red light when two men on another motorcycle stopped alongside him, and one of the gunmen shot him in the back. Magalhães tried to retrieve his weapon to defend himself, but then he was shot 13 more times, mainly in the back and in the head, reported the news site Ponta Porã Digital.
This year alone, not including the killing of Rocaro, the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas has reported four other killings of Brazilian journalists -- Laércio de Souza, Mario Randolfo Marques Lopes, Onei de Moura, and Divino Aparecido Carvalho. However, because investigations are still in process, it is hard to determine if the killings are necessarily tied to their journalistic work.
