A mother of two has been shot dead in front of her husband after their sat nav which was supposed to be directing them to the beach sent them the wrong way into a gang-controlled favela Brazil.
Regina Murmura, 70, and her husband Francisco, 69, had been attempting to reach a beach when they accidentally drove into the gang-controlled Caramujo favela in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday.
Police officers who attended the incident told reporters the couple had been using the Waze navigation app when they became lost and ended up on the Rua Quintino Bocaiúva inside the favela where they were shot at by drug traffickers.
Pictures taken following the incident show the couple’s silver Citroen car riddled with bullet holes.
The Telegraph reports Mr Murmura said: ‘When I got out, and the guy came with a gun, the best thing he could have done, to me, would have been to put me out and end it.’
The newspaper also reports that police believe the traffickers who carried out the shooting work for Rodrigo da Silva Rodrigues, one of the most violent and notorious drug lords in the city.
Coronel Fernando Salema, of the military police in Niteroi, told local paper O Globo: ‘It was cowardly.
‘They fired even though they knew they were an elderly couple.
‘The gentleman was very confused. He even said that he got out of the car and received a rifle butt.
‘It was an unfortunate coincidence.’
The Murmuras ran a travel agency and had two daughters named Renata and Francine.
Renata told the Telegraph: ‘They were not a couple, they were a single person.
‘My dad still called my mum a treasure. In my 43 years, I’ve never seen anything like it.’
Police in Rio de Janeiro are currently reinforcing patrols in areas popular with tourists and near venues that will host Olympic events next year after a series of attacks on both locals and foreigners.
