By Isabela Fraga
The second witness to the April 2012 murder of Brazilian journalist Décio Sá has died after being shot seven times during an attack in January, said the newspaper Estado de S. Paulo.
According to the news website G1, Ricardo Silva (alias Carioca) was hospitalized for three weeks in São Luiz after the attack, while seven suspects were apprehended. Silva, the principal witness of Sá’s murder, had links with the loan sharks that had planned the murder, according to Maranhão police. He was set to give more details on the case soon, said Uol.
According to Estado de S. Paulo, the undersecretary for Intelligence and Strategic Affairs of the Ministry of Public Security of Maranhão, Laércio Costa, said that Silva was a key witness and that someone had ordered his assassination.
Declared solved in June 2012, the investigation into Décio Sá’s murder had many twists and turns. In January of this year, the defense asked to suspend witness testimony, and was accused by Maranhão’s attorney general of trying to “delay the course of proceedings.” Sá was murdered on April 23 in São Luiz after denouncing an extortion ring in the state. His murder revided the debate about the safety of regional journalists in Brazil.
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
