A man in his 30s was “pursued and executed” with various shots, including one to the head, in a street in Póvoa de Varzim in the early hours of Sunday morning.
Residents woken by the sound of gunshots describe ‘looking outside, and seeing a man lying in a pool of blood’.
He had been shot multiple times, including at least one shot to the head.
The alert went out to police around 5am. “Everything indicates that the victim was being pursued”, being a target over the settling of “settling of scores”.
For anyone familiar with Póvoa de Varzim (best known for its association with fishing), the man’s body was found in Avenida Vasco da Gama, but various “papers with blood” were discovered in Rua Dr Artur Aires, suggesting the man was already wounded in this location, before he started running from his pursuers.
As to an identity, some reports today are alluding to the victim being “a foreigner”; others say he was a Brazilian – and that the ‘settling of scores’ had to do with drug trafficking.
Diário de Notícias, for example, reports that very recently, custodial sentences were handed to two leaders of a drug trafficking network that operated in Póvoa de Varzim and Vila do Conde, in the Porto district, and in Funchal, in the autonomous region of Madeira”.
PJ police are investigating.
UPDATE: It transpires that the dead man was the leader of a trafficking gang in Brazil who arrived in Portugal to avoid a prison sentence in his country. Notícias ao Minuto reports that his name was Rafael Lourenço, that he was the suspected leader of a group known as “Os fantasmas do Cajuru” (the ghosts of Cajuru), which is active in Curitiba, Paraná and linked to drug trafficking, money-laundering… and murders.
Sources: Correio da Manhã/ Diário de Notícias
