SÃO PAULO, Brazil — An off-duty military police officer was the 12th murder victim in São Paulo this weekend and the 90th cop killed in Brazil's largest city this year.
On Saturday night, the officer was pulling up to his house with his nine-year old daughter in the passenger seat when he was forcibly removed from his car, reported Folha de S. Paulo. The killers then shot him at least nine times and fled the scene, leaving his daughter screaming for help in the street. Neighbors tried to rush the officer — who had been working for the military police for 10 years — to the hospital, but he died on the way.
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Another military police officer was shot in the head early Saturday morning, according to EFE. He was rushed to the hospital and survived his injuries.
ROTA officers also gunned down a suspected drug trafficker on Saturday after refusing to stop his vehicle on a São Paulo highway, according to AAP. Reports identified him as the Paraisopolis's drug lord, a favela where 600 heavily-armed military police moved in Monday after receiving information that orders to kill military officers had been handed out by a crime boss in the slum.
Overnight from Thursday to Friday, 11 other people also died in São Paulo's metropolitan area, including a policeman shot by assailants attempting to steal his motorcycle, AAP reported. The violence has been linked to an alleged undeclared war between the military police and a prison drug-trafficking gang known as PCC (First Command of the Capital).
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