Death of Giovani Rodrigues: seven of the eight defendants accused of qualified homicide – News

To two of these defendants, the Public Prosecutor also charges them with “the practice of a crime of possession of a prohibited weapon”.

The eighth defendant is accused of the crime of “personal favor” for allegedly “hiding, at the request of an accused, the stick with club used for the practice of the facts”.

The Public Prosecutor’s Office found that on the night of December 21, 2019, between 2:30 am and 3:15 am, in a bar located in the city of Bragança, one of the defendants and another individual accompanying him fell out with the four young men Cape Verdeans.

The reason for the disagreement, according to the prosecution, will be the fact that the defendants “assumed that these young men were harassing their girlfriends, which gave rise to a skirmish healed by those in charge of the security of the said establishment”.

The version of the Public Prosecutor’s Office goes on to indicate that, already abroad, the four young Cape Verdeans “went back to the said individual and his girlfriend, with them locking themselves up for reasons, which motivated four of the defendants to come to the scene, who got involved with young people in reciprocal aggressions ”.

The Public Prosecutor further indicated that “intending to avoid the aggressions, the four young men ran away from the place, coming to be intercepted by another defendant who struck them several times with a stick with a club at one end”.

According to the prosecution, “in the meantime those four defendants arrived and still two others, one of them armed with a metal knuckle, and the seven then acted in concert, attacking the four young men with kicks, punches and strokes with sticks and with the brass knuckle ”.

The Public Ministry found that three of the Cape Verdean youths fled, “but one of them (Giovani) was surrounded by the seven defendants, being then attacked by everyone, namely on the head, with more punches and kicks, strokes with sticks, the metallic part of a belt and a knuckle, ending up prostrate on the floor ”.

The Public Ministry understands that “this young man came to suffer injuries resulting from these aggressions that caused him to die, which occurred ten days later” and that “it was the defendants’ purpose that the same happened to the other three, which only did not happen because reasons beyond their control ”.

Cape Verdean student Giovani Rodrigues was found alone on a street in Bragança on December 21 and died 10 days later in a hospital in Porto.

The death of the young man, who had arrived in the region just over a month ago to study at the Mirandela school of the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança (IPB), prompted institutional reactions from Portugal and Cape Verde.

The calls for justice and non-violence also resulted in marches in honor of the young Cape Verdean, on January 11th.

Both the police and judicial authorities stressed that “there was no evidence that the facts committed by the defendants were determined by racial hatred or generated by the color, ethnic origin or nationality of the victims”.

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