International outrage is growing over a Brazilian soccer player who is being allowed back into the game after serving time for arranging to have his pregnant girlfriend killed, then assisting in chopping up her body and feeding it to dogs.
Metro.com is reporting on the story of a well-known Brazilian goalkeeper, Bruno Fernandes de Souza, who served just seven years of a 22-year sentence for the horrific murder of his pregnant girlfriend in 2010.
Bruno, who was married with children at the time, had an affair with 25 year-old Eliza Samudio, which resulted in a pregnancy. Bruno tried to pressure Samudio into aborting their unborn son, but she refused.
Eliza’s friend, Milena Baroni, a 25 year-old law student from Rio, told the Daily Beast in 2010: “He wanted her to get rid of the baby, abort it. She didn’t want to. She was against abortion.”
Police say Bruno then arranged to have Samudio abducted and tortured by a former military policeman named Luiz Santas who was paid more than $9,000 to kill her. Bruno watched as Samudio was murdered and admitted in 2013 that he helped Santos chop up her body and feed it to rottweilers. Samudio’s body was never found.
Bruno was sentenced to 22 years and three months for her murder and the disposal of the body.
After serving just seven years of his sentence, he was released from jail on February 24 and signed a two-year contract with the soccer club Boa Esporte.
The decision by the team to sign such a ruthless killer has caused an uproar in Brazil with one of the club’s main sponsors ending its relationship.
In response to the fury, club president Rone Moraes da Costa released a statement in which he felt the club was doing a positive thing by helping to rehabilitate a person back into society by giving him work.
He said the club “was not responsible for the release and freedom of the athlete, Bruno, but the club and the team, as a company, represented by human beings, endowed with justice and legality, can say that they tried to do justice by helping a human being.”
As of this writing, Bruno is due to begin playing within the next two months.
Violence against pregnant women and their unborn babies is common in the U.S. with the Centers for Disease Control finding that one in six women is first abused during a pregnancy.
In one study conducted in the state of Maryland, homicide was the leading cause of death during pregnancy for women under the age of 25, and who were unmarried and/or African American. A staggering 63 percent of those homicides were committed by an intimate partner.
© All Rights Reserved, Living His Life Abundantly®/Women of Grace® http://www.womenofgrace.com
