But Paulo Roberto Braga does not respond, as shown in a video recorded on Tuesday.
The 68-year-old man died.
In an incident that went viral here, police said Nunes, 42, took Braga’s body to a bank branch in Rio de Janeiro on Tuesday afternoon to get a loan of about $3,250.
“Anyone who watches the video can say that he was dead,” Fábio Souza, the police’s main investigator, told the Globonews television channel. “Can you imagine it? she touched him. She knew he was dead.
Nunes is now charged with theft by fraud and abuse of a corpse. Police are currently working to determine his relationship to Braga and the circumstances of his death, Souza said, and are looking for the person who led them to the scene.
Nunes told investigators that Braga was alive when they entered the bank, police said. She identified herself as his niece and caregiver.
The incident began on Tuesday around 2 p.m., when Nunes arrived at the Banco Itaú branch. Employees noticed Braga’s appearance, became suspicious and began recording video.
“I don’t think he’s doing well,” observes an employee. “There is no color in his face.”
“He’s like that,” Nunes said.
Nunes grabs his head, video shows. She tries to put a pen between her fingers.
The bank called an ambulance. When paramedics arrived, they said Braga had been dead for several hours.
Souza said investigators identified the presence of livor mortis (the settling of blood that is no longer circulating through the heart) — an indication, he said, that he died lying down and not sitting up in the Wheelchair.
Nunes told investigators that Braga was hospitalized last week with pneumonia but was released Monday. Security video taken Monday shows her leaving the hospital with Braga, then still alive, in a wheelchair.
The bank’s video circulated widely on social media, inspiring memes and comments.
“What a depressing scene“wrote an X user.
Some people laughed at the scene. Others said it was no laughing matter. Some took the opportunity to condemn President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or his predecessors, deplore the state of morality in Brazil or even declare the end of times.
Some said it cast the country in an unfairly negative light.
“Brazil is not that,” wrote another. “Extreme cases like this exist all over the world. »
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