‘Operations must go on,’ says widow of police officer killed in action in Rio

As the wife of a police officer, now a widow, I say with absolute certainty that they [police officers] must continue. They can’t stop. They have to keep operating. Unfortunately, my husband’s life ended, but there are many good people who are tired of violence. Jessica Araujo, Heber’s wife, to UOL. The news of his death came after missed calls and a photo. Whenever a fellow officer died, Heber would say he could be next. Yet, Jessica said she never believed it would happen. ‘He would say: ‘I’m ready. You can relax, that’s how I’ll [die], doing what I love most.’ But at the same time, I thought it would never happen,’ she recalls. Jessica found out about the police operation on TV as she was getting ready for work. A sales manager, she was not informed of when or where raids involving her husband would take place. However, she suspected something would happen last week because she received a message from Heber Monday night asking her to pray for him. ‘I sent an ‘I love you’ and he saw it. After a while, I sent another message saying: ‘Send news whenever you can.’ And then he didn’t see me anymore. Jessica Araujo, to UOL. Heber’s wife suspected something was wrong when a friend called asking her to leave work and go to his brother’s house. Jessica called the brother-in-law, who confirmed, distraught, that the sergeant had been shot. ‘I replied: ‘He died,” she recalls. Jessica traveled over 13 kilometers, through a Rio de Janeiro besieged by barricades, to reach a hospital in Penha, where her husband’s body lay. Tuesday afternoon was marked by chaos in the city, with more than 70 buses used to block roads, along with trucks and other vehicles. ‘I asked the doctor to identify his body, because I needed to see it to believe what had happened. When I entered the room, I saw that it had indeed happened. My world collapsed. I fainted, I felt bad. At that moment, all I could think was: ‘What will become of me? What am I going to tell my daughter?’ A 12-year-old girl, very attached to her father. Jessica Araujo, to UOL. From a humble childhood to an ‘anonymous hero.’ Heber had four siblings and lost his parents when he was still a child. He was raised by an aunt in the Inhoaiba neighborhood, in the Campo Grande region, west of Rio, in a simple house and within a family that, according to his wife, ‘never went hungry, but had its financial difficulties.’ The sergeant studied in Rio’s public school system and served in the Navy as a naval rifleman before deciding to join the police force. When he met his wife, he was already a PM, though not yet in the BOPE, where he joined just before becoming the father of their youngest daughter, 12 years old. Heber was ‘homey and reserved,’ according to family members interviewed by UOL. Due to work, he did not have social media accounts. Jessica also did not post photos with her husband on her profiles. ‘He was an anonymous hero,’ says Jessica, who kept his identity secret for security. According to colleagues, the officer died trying to rescue a wounded friend. ‘What gave me strength to speak today [to the news] is to show who he really was. He wasn’t just a number. Because several times, in various situations, policemen have died. And behind each uniform there is a story, there is a family,’ she said. Jessica and the children have not been able to return home yet. The sergeant left behind a 12-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son. During the interview, the two teenagers listened silently to their mother’s account, supporting each other. The agent was mourned on Thursday alongside fellow officer Cleiton Serafim Fonseca, 42, at the headquarters of the Special Operations Battalion, in the south zone. Heber was buried in the Sulacap neighborhood, in the western part of the city. On the way to the cemetery, there was a procession and tributes. In addition to Rio Military Police vehicles, vehicles from the Armed Forces accompanied the procession, as Heber was a naval rifleman before becoming a military policeman. Police identify the dead. Of the 117 dead, 109 had been identified by the police by Saturday afternoon. Thirty-nine of them were from other states, such as Pará, Amazonas, Goiás, and Ceará. Of the total suspects killed, 43 had outstanding arrest warrants. Additionally, 78 targets had a significant criminal history, according to the Rio government. At least 30 of the identified dead had no police record. The secretary said they were ‘people who went unnoticed by police action.’ Thirty-nine dead are from other states: 13 from Pará, 7 from Amazonas, 6 from Bahia, 4 from Ceará, 4 from Goiás, 1 from Paraíba, 1 from Mato Grosso, 3 from Espírito Santo.