Two police officers suspected of going on a shooting spree that left 30 people dead in Rio de Janeiro were arrested and questioned after an intensive manhunt, authorities said.
Composite sketches and anonymous tips led police to officers Jose Augusto Moreira Felipe, 32, and Fabiano Goncalves Lopes, 30, police said. The two officers, who worked in the district where the shootings occurred Thursday, were taken into custody Saturday afternoon at their home, police said. A .380-caliber pistol was also found, though authorities have not said if that weapon was used in the shootings.
The killings Thursday were the bloodiest massacre in years in a state already famous for its homicide rate. Authorities had suspected the killings were likely the work of rogue police angered by the arrest of eight other officers caught on film while disposing of two bodies.
The two men were questioned, but had not been charged yet, said Marcela Lobo, a spokeswoman for the Rio de Janeiro Public Safety Department. Authorities did not immediately release details about the interrogation.
A warrant for their arrest had been issued Friday based on the sketches, and Rio de Janeiro state Governor Rosinha Matheus had offered a US$1,900 reward for information leading to the capture of the gunmen, whose victims included five teenagers who were shot while playing video games at a bar.
"We want this case to be rigorously investigated because it can't go unpunished," Matheus said Saturday on her weekly radio program. "As a mother I'm shocked. Only monsters are capable of that."
Elite police units had searched for the suspects in two squalid neighborhoods on Rio's outskirts on Saturday and, aided by federal agents, set up roadblocks and searched houses in the impoverished Baixada area -- a sprawling network of shantytowns some 35km north of Rio where the shootings took place. Authorities were still searching for at least two other men.
Police believe the men are linked to death squads -- shadowy associations often made up of off-duty or retired officers who are hired by local businessmen to kill undesirables. The death squads created an international uproar 12 years ago when they were believed to have killed eight children sleeping outside a church in Rio's downtown.
Marcelo Itagiba, Rio's state security secretary, said the crime was likely the work of police angered by the arrest of eight officers caught on film while disposing of two bodies.
But Justice Minister Marcio Thomaz Bastos said it was too early to say for sure that the killings were the work of corrupt officers.
"We must follow all lines of investigation so nobody gets away, whoever they may be," Bastos said.
According to witnesses, the shooting started around 10pm when four men got out of a silver Volkswagen and opened fire on the crowd at a street corner bar in Nova Iguacu. Fifteen people were found dead in and around the bar, and three more died in the hospital Friday.
The gunmen left the scene, firing randomly and killing two bicyclists along the road, then killed 10 people more in Queimados, a neighboring town.
Victims were buried Saturday, as families wept and held up banners calling for justice. A memorial mass for the victims was planned late Saturday at the Santo Antonio Cathedral in Nova Iguacu.
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