Car in which suspect fled has been recovered
With the presumed author of the shots that killed one and injured two others in Viseu on Friday evening still ‘evading authorities’, media sources have been tracking the threats of reprisals over social media.
The death of 44-year-old “Mimi” (Elsa Alexandra) ‘will not go unavenged; there will be other deaths’, say posts cited by Correio da Manhã today which says there has been another shooting in Valpaços that appears to be connected with the Viseu incident. It involved people in a Spanish plated car opening fire on a parked car, leaving it pitted with holes consistent with those made by a hunting rifle.
According to the paper, there was no one in the car at the time, but it belongs to a member of the gypsy community that lives in the area, and has been interpreted as “a warning of what could happen”.
Authorities meantime are searching various parts of the country in which family members of the suspect are known to live/ have connections.
The car (a grey Audi A4) in which ‘José Carlos’ is understood to have made his escape after the shooting has been recovered in Vilar Seco, in the municipality of Nelas. It is the property of one of his uncles, who, during questioning by police, suggested his nephew was already in Spain. CM says authorities here are not convinced, and remain looking for José Carlos in ‘key locations’ in the north, Porto and Braga.
By unhappy coincidence, left-wing MP Fabian Figueiredo was talking on CNN Portugal on Friday evening, criticising what he dubbed “the false perceptions of insecurity” in Portugal and ‘related abuses’ by the government, when his discourse had to be interrupted for the station to give the news about the shooting outside a packed shopping centre in Viseu. According to columnist João Pereira Coutinho, Figueiredo appeared “impervious to the irony of the moment.
“Yes, the numbers tell us that Portugal is a safe country”, Coutinho’s comment continues. “But the numbers already say that violent and serious crime is increasing: in Viseu alone, local crime increased by 36.1% in 2023, according to the last RASI (annual report on internal security)”.
The piece ends with “Poor left. It continues to think its greatest enemy is the right. No comrades, it isn’t (…) the greatest enemy of the left continues to be reality”.
