PEDIATRICS Vol. 93 No. 6 June 1994, pp. 976
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WHEN DEATH SQUADS MEET STREET CHILDREN

J. F. L. MD

Four children are murdered every day in Brazil. While the general murder rate has decreased in Rio de Janeiro since 1990, more children are being murdered: 306 died in 1991, 424 last year, and in the first six months of this year the number leapt to 298. Sao Paulo and Recife are not far behind.

The grim statistics usually get tucked away in the crime pages of the tabloids. Last week, however, when eight street children were shot dead in the centre of Rio the news shocked even Brazil.

The circumstances were especially macabre. The children, aged between 11 and 17, all poor and most of them black, were shot around midnight as they huddled by an elegant fountain in a prominent square named after Pope Pius khgr. The five gunmen carried out their assault in the shadows of the Nossa Senhora da Candelaria, a floodlit 18th-century Catholic church which serves as one of Rio's prettiest postcards and a favoured spot for society weddings.