RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil: Brazilian police have arrested a woman who tried to take out a bank loan for a man she was pushing in a wheelchair who turned out to be dead.
Employees at a Rio de Janeiro bank called emergency services on Tuesday (Apr 16) after becoming suspicious when Erika Vieira Nunes wheeled the 68-year-old man into the bank and requested a loan in his name.
Footage of the incident shows her holding a pen and moving his hand forward to no response. At one point in the video, the man’s head falls back when she stops holding it up.
“Uncle, are you listening? You need to sign,” Nunes says in the security video, suggesting she sign for him.
“He doesn’t say anything, that’s just how he is,” she continues, adding: “If you’re not okay, I’m going to take you to the hospital.”
When emergency workers arrived, they determined the man was dead, police said in a statement. His corpse was then taken to a morgue.
Brazilian media reports said that Nunes claimed to be the man’s niece and sought to take out a loan of 17,000 reais (about US$3,250) in his name.
Police for the precinct of Bangu, on Rio’s west side, arrested her for attempted theft by fraud and defiling a cadaver, they said.
“She tried to make it look like he was signing the papers,” local investigation chief Fabio Luiz told news site G1.
“But he was already dead when he entered the bank.”
Nunes’ lawyer argued that the man died at the bank but a police forensic analysis determined he had died earlier while lying down.
