A Tower Comes Down on a Sleeping Household
The structure gave way around 2 a.m. on September 12, crashing onto a house on Rua Tequici in the Penha district of eastern São Paulo. Fire crews eventually logged roughly 70 firefighters and 22 vehicles at the scene as the death toll climbed through the weekend. By Sunday afternoon, six bodies had been pulled from the rubble — three women, one of them pregnant, two men and a young girl — and the search was called off with no one else missing.
How many people were actually inside the house is still murky. São Paulo's state Civil Defense initially put the number at eight, while other outlets, citing fire officials, reported as many as ten people affected, including four children. What is settled is the final split: six deaths and two survivors — a man and a young girl, reported elsewhere as five to seven years old — who were pulled out with minor injuries and taken to a public hospital in nearby Tatuapé.
Who the Victims Were
The dead have now been identified: Edelmira Titicayo Limachi, 26; her husband, Brayan Gery Gutiérrez, 29; her brother, Sergio Titicayo Limachi; Maria Elena Ramírez Titicayo; her seven-year-old daughter, Shaira Diana Chinó Ramírez, whose body was the last recovered; and Ana Lucía Ruiz Romero, 38, according to relatives and advocacy groups. The extended family had lived in Brazil for nine years and had moved into the Tequici Street house only about a month before the collapse, running a small sewing workshop out of the property.
Their nationalities are reported inconsistently. São Paulo's state government told the press that seven of the eight people caught in the collapse were Bolivian and one was Paraguayan. Bolivia's consulate is arranging to send the remains to the city of Oruro at the families' request. Consulate lawyer Patricia Veiga was blunt about what she believes caused the deaths, telling reporters "we believe it was not an accident, and it was a homicide."
A Building Site Flagged Since 2019
City files trace the property's troubles back years before Saturday. Builder New Home Construtora began work in 2019 without a valid permit — the city had already turned the application down — and the Penha subprefecture responded with a stop-work order and a string of fines, including one totaling roughly R$119,000. When construction continued regardless, the city's legal office sued in 2021 to force a halt, and a judge ordered the work stopped.
A revised proposal followed in 2022, and in August 2023 the city granted a permit — but for a specific, legal 11-story, 39-unit building, and only on condition that the earlier, unauthorized structure come down first, according to city records reviewed by local outlets. That old structure stood at about five floors at the time. It never was torn down. Instead, police say it kept rising, reaching roughly nine floors by the time it collapsed — a detail Mayor Ricardo Nunes has separately confirmed while touring the site.
The Sign-Off That Wasn't Real
That unmet condition now sits at the center of a criminal inquiry. A February 2024 inspection report, signed by a Penha subprefecture employee, certified that the old structure had already been demolished, and a judge closed the underlying lawsuit on the strength of it. After the building came down, city engineers cross-checked the sign-off against satellite imagery and residents' accounts and concluded the demolition had likely never happened. The employee has been suspended for 30 days while the municipal comptroller's office, known as the CGM, investigates how the certification was produced. Separately, a lead detective on the case said neighbors had reported cracks forming in nearby homes in the months before the collapse.
An Arrest, Two Fugitives and a Legal Fight
Police detained Ronaldo Vivacqua on Sunday, describing him as a hidden partner behind New Home Construtora despite his name not appearing on the company's official paperwork; São Paulo's Court of Justice has since upheld his continued detention. Warrants were also issued for his son, engineer Cristiano Vivacqua, who held formal technical responsibility for the project, and for Cristiano's wife, Isis Brandão, the company's listed owner. Lead detective Deidiene Fialho Costa Éboli said evidence pointed to a foreseeable risk of collapse and added, "we also fear the risk of flight and the destruction of possible evidence."
The builder's side tells a different story. Adelmo Silva, the lawyer representing the three, says a March 2025 court decision authorized the project to keep moving forward and plans to present that ruling to investigators. He disputes that Cristiano and Isis are fleeing, saying both intend to turn themselves in, and argues the work had actually stalled for lack of money rather than continuing in defiance of the law. New Home has said in a statement that it does not rule out being found responsible once technical findings are in, while maintaining the city had formally recognized the project as regularized — and has pointed to excavation on a neighboring lot as a factor investigators should examine.
City Hall's Response, and What's Still Unresolved
City hall has frozen every active construction project tied to companies connected to New Home and stopped processing new permit requests from them. Governor Tarcísio de Freitas said preliminary information showed the project had been embargoed and that what was actually built didn't match what regulators had signed off on. Pressed on whether the storms that hit greater São Paulo in the days beforehand played a role, the governor was skeptical, saying "if it had been built properly, it wouldn't have collapsed because of rain." Civil Defense has likewise stopped short of officially blaming the weather, treating the case as a structural and regulatory failure rather than a storm-related accident. Both the police inquiry and the municipal comptroller's review remain open.
