By Police1 Staff
SAO PAULO, Brazil — An off-duty officer is being hailed as a hero after surveillance video shows her shooting a would-be armed robber at a Mother’s Day event near a school.
Fox News reported that 42-year-old Brazilian military officer Katia da Silva Sastre was standing near a group of women and children celebrating a Mother’s Day event when an armed man tried to rob them. Sastre, who was attending the event with her daughter, pulled out her firearm and shot the man, identified as 21-year-old Elivelton Neves Moreira, three times in the chest, according to the Daily Mail.
“I didn’t know if he was going to shoot the kids or the mothers or the security guard at the school door,” Sastre said. “I just thought about defending the moms, the children, my own life and my daughter’s.”
The officer kicked Moreira’s gun out of his reach after he fell to the ground. Moreira was taken to a hospital, where he later died, according to The Sun.
Sao Paulo Governor Marcio Franca visited Sastre at her police station and praised the officer for her heroic actions.
“I went earlier to the 4th BAEP in the east of Sao Paulo to honor a very special mother: Corporal Katia Sastre. Her courage and precision saved mothers and children yesterday at the door of a school,” Franca wrote on Twitter.
Sastre, a mother of two girls, has worked on the police force for 20 years.
“She pushed the children out of the way and approached the thief. She shoots, the boy shoots, the boy tries to shoot at her leg,” Brazilian public security secretary Maggie Alves said. “She immobilizes the boy and calls the [emergency services]. It was a perfect procedure from a technical point of view.”
https://twitter.com/marciofrancagov/status/995666477452754944