A barely believable scene. Erika de Souza Vieira was arrested Tuesday afternoon by police in Rio (Brazil) after taking her uncle in a wheelchair to the bank to have him withdraw the sum of 17,000 Brazilian reais, the equivalent of 3,000 euros , reports CNN Brazil. The only problem was that the 68-year-old man had been dead for several hours.
On a video, we see the woman who says she is the niece of the sixty-year-old trying to get him to sign a document by firmly taking his hand, while trying to hold his head up. “Uncle Paulo, are you listening to me? You have to sign. I can't sign for you,” says the woman, who tries to simulate a conversation with the inert man in his wheelchair.
The bank employees then point out to him that his uncle does not seem to be in great shape. “I don’t think he’s doing well. He’s very pale,” one of them told him, who decided to film the scene. “He doesn’t say anything, he’s just like that,” she replies, before feigning a conversation with him again. “Sign so it doesn’t give me more of a headache.” (…) If you are not well uncle, I will take you to the hospital. Do you want to go back? », she asks the man without reaction.
Faced with this worrying situation, the bankers, skeptical, decided to call emergency services who went to the scene and found that the man had been dead for several hours. “The people at the bank thought he was sick and wasn't feeling well. When he arrived there, the doctor found that he had died, apparently a few hours ago. In other words, he was already dead when he entered the bank,” said Fábio Luiz da Silva Souza, the police chief in charge of the case.
She faces up to 13 years in prison
Arrested at the scene by Brazilian police, Erika de Souza Vieira Nunes told them that she had been her uncle's niece and caregiver for some time. After verifying that they were indeed from the same family, authorities looked at video surveillance cameras inside and outside the bank to see if the woman was alone or with accomplices potentially involved in organized fraud .
For the moment, the results of the autopsy aimed at establishing the cause of death have not yet been made public. Police sources reported that the woman should be charged with attempted theft by fraud and damaging a corpse. If convicted, she faces up to 13 years in prison.