Those who knew Thiago Menezes Flausino described him as a boy with dreams. These were brutally shattered by several police bullets this week, when the 13-year-old became one of the latest victims of state violence in a Rio de Janeiro favela.
“He dreamed of becoming a professional footballer. He’d passed tryouts for a bigger team and was going to start playing on the day he was killed,” said his aunt Nataly Bezerra Flausino, standing outside the evangelical church where her nephew’s funeral was being held on Tuesday, mere months after his baptism.
