"The people in the favelas are victims twice over"

Violence in the favelas is on the American news radar with this piece in the Baltimore Sun, focusing on the December 3 murder of 5 in Rio.

The gunmen were police officers. 4 of the 5 dead were teenagers:

...after hearing the officers' conflicting accounts and visiting the bar where the killings took place, members of the state's human rights commission said there were "very strong indications" that the boys had been summarily executed - that the only shots were fired by the police.

One of the victims was 11-year-old Wellington Santiago, who had stopped at the bar with friends to buy sodas for a birthday party they were on their way to attend.

"He was shot five times, in the head, in the stomach, which destroyed his internal organs, and the arm," said Fernanda de Oliveira, his mother. "He was killed in such a brutal way. So very cruel."

Wellington was a conscientious student who had nothing to do with drugs, de Oliveira said.

She described police incursions as a constant horror in Morro do Estado, the favela where she lives: "They invade all the time. The schools are constantly closing" because of confrontations between police and drug traffickers.

Twelve officers have been detained in the killings.

Read the entire piece by Henry Chu.