An Army soldier was found burned Friday afternoon inside a building of the 1st Guard Cavalry Regiment (RCG), in the Urban Military Sector, Cruzeiro region, Federal District. The victim is Corporal Maria de Lourdes Freire Matos, aged 25, and the suspect is Private Kelvin Barros a Silva, aged 21, who confessed to the crime.
According to the Civil Police Chief, Paulo Noritika, in his statement, the suspect said that he had a relationship with the victim and that they had argued that day because the soldier wanted him to break up with his girlfriend.
— She would have drawn her firearm. He allegedly held the gun while she tried to give him ammunition. With the other hand, he managed to reach his military knife at the waist and hit her once deep in the neck, the body of the victim having been found with the bladed weapon at the site of the wound, he explained in a video posted on social networks.
Noritika said that, according to the suspect, he then poured alcohol on the scene and set it on fire, leaving the woman’s body charred. Maria de Lourdes was a saxophonist and had been in the army for five months.
Federal District military firefighters said they were called at 4:06 p.m. to fight a fire at the site. As the burned materials cooled, rescuers located the charred body.
In a statement, the army indicated that a military police investigation (IPM) had been opened to clarify the circumstances of the fire and the murder of the soldier. Kelvin Barros is being held at the Brasilia Army Police Battalion. According to the Force, he should be expelled from the army.
“The Brazilian Army provides its full support to the family and deeply regrets the loss of Corporal Maria de Lourdes Freire Matos and reiterates its position of not supporting criminal acts and rigorously punishing those responsible,” he stressed.