06/15/2024 – 19:49
Relatives of the young man of Leonardo Rodrigues Nunes, aged 24, who was shot and killed after going to a meeting arranged through a dating app, in the early hours of Thursday, 13th, in São Paulo, will ask the police to investigate a possible crime of hate. According to his father, Aurélio Nunes, his son Leonardo died because he was gay. “We are living in a world where hate is directed at people who are black, poor and gay. My son is yet another victim,” he said.
According to information from the Civil Police report, Leonardo had spoken to a man through a dating app and left home, in the Cambuci neighborhood, around 11 pm on Wednesday, 12. According to his friend Evelyn Miranda , perhaps because he already feared something, he shared his location with a friend and informed them that he should be back at 2 am.
As the boy did not return at the stated time and did not give any notice, the friends looked for contact details on the profile of the man the boy would meet. They then saw that the profile had been removed from the application. Evelyn says that Leo was the owner of three cats and didn’t usually spend the night outside the house. “The hours passed, we called, got voicemail and we started to get worried. That’s when we saw that the person he was talking to deleted their profile on the app,” she said.
The young people filed a missing persons report at the 5th Missing Persons Police Station of the Department of Homicide and Personal Protection (DHPP) and tried to locate Nunes’ whereabouts from the last location of her cell phone, the Heliópolis favela, in the district of Sacomã, in the south zone.
When searching hospitals in the region, they were informed that a young man had been admitted with gunshot wounds to the emergency room at Hospital Ipiranga, but ended up dying. They recognized Leonardo’s body from the photos and notified the boy’s family. According to Evelyn, he was without his documents and cell phone, probably stolen by the perpetrator.
Commotion atmosphere
Leonardo’s body was laid to rest and buried in the early afternoon of this Saturday, the 15th, at the Parque dos Pinheiros Cemetery, in Vila Nova Galvão, in the north of the capital. In an atmosphere of commotion, friends and family asked for justice. According to Evelyn, he was born in Minas Gerais, but lived in the capital. “He was my best friend, a dear, good person, the best person in the world. We don’t understand where so much violence, so much hatred comes from,” he said.
Evelyn had known Leo, as he was called, for almost two years. She says that her parents live in Minas Gerais, but her son moved to São Paulo to study. “Leo worked in customer service, went to college related to psychology, he was full of dreams.”
According to the young woman, Leonardo was talking to the man via the dating app, on the 12th, Valentine’s Day. “The app he was caught on was a gay dating chat. And there have been many cases lately in the same application.”
For her, the boy may have been a victim of a hate crime because he is gay. “Yes, because if it was a robbery, you would steal it and let him go, right? Why kill? A cell phone is not worth a life,” she said.
On her profile on X (formerly Twitter), Leonardo’s mother, Adriana Nunes, posted an outburst: “Justice for Leo. My heart bleeds from receiving such monstrous news. My son was a wonderful person. An enlightened human being, incapable of harming any person or animal. This fight is now mine, in fact it is ours. LGBT community, let’s go,” she wrote.
In another post, next to a photo of her son, Adriana wrote: “It hurts so much. I didn’t receive your good morning message today! Why my God. Why?”, she questioned.
According to the São Paulo Public Security Secretariat (SSP-SP), the Civil Police requested tests from the Criminalistics Institute and the Legal Medical Institute (IML). Reports are awaited to define the cause of death and the direction of the investigation. According to the ministry, the case is under investigation by the Civil Police.
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