Two fugitive killers built an underground bunker to hide from police drones that detect human heat after fleeing a maximum security prison in the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Norte.
Convicted murderers Rogério da Silva and Deibson Cabral set up their hideout near the house of a couple they were holding hostage after escaping from the Mossoró Federal Penitentiary, in the municipality of Baraúnas, on February 14, Brazilian magazine Fantastico revealed.
Cabral and da Silva were housed in adjacent cells at the Mossoró Federal Penitentiary, where they were serving 81 and 74 years for murder, respectively.
On February 17, the convicts broke into a rural residence 21 kilometers from the prison and paid the couple about $1,000 to allow them to sleep in hammocks.
There, they dug a hole and used a tarp to protect them from heat-seeking drones.
Deibson Cabral (left) and Rogério da Silva (right) escaped from the Mossoró Federal Penitentiary, in the northeastern municipality of Baraúnas, on February 14. They are the first inmates to escape from any of the five prisons that make up the country’s federal prison. system
Deibson Cabral (left) and Rogério da Silva built an underground bunker and covered it with tree branches and a tarp so that police drones could not detect them.
“They asked us to be calm and that nothing would happen if we did what they asked of us,” said the owner held hostage.
The man told police that he and his wife complied because da Silva and Cabral revealed information about their family and that it seemed like they knew to go to their house.
“They said all the time that people were watching us, but that nothing would happen if we helped,” he said.
The man added that they forced him to buy them food and left it under a tree on his property.
To hide from police, da Silva and Cabral dug a hole in the woods near the couple’s home, covering it with branches and a tarp.
Da Silva and Cabral fled the property on Friday shortly after police stopped the man at a checkpoint and revealed he had been forced to provide shelter.
A homeowner revealed that the fugitive suspects broke into his home on February 17 and forced him and his wife to provide shelter.
No prisoners had escaped from Brazil’s federal prison system until February 14, when Rogério da Silva and Deibson Cabral, who were housed in adjoining cells, escaped from the Mossoró Federal Penitentiary.
The superintendent of the Federal Highway Police, Péricles Santos, said that the fugitives also fed thanks to the fruits produced in the region, but the sniffer dogs could not trace their whereabouts in the forest because the rain had erased their tracks in soil.
Authorities divided 500 officers into day and night units in hopes of capturing the suspects, who could be hiding in any of 207 caves spread across 32 square miles.
No prisoners had escaped from Brazil’s federal prison system until February 14, when da Silva and Cabral, who were housed in adjoining cells, fled the Mossoró Federal Penitentiary.
They were able to make holes in the upper area of their cells.
“We want to know how these citizens dug a hole and no one saw it,” Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva said last week.
The Brazilian fugitives paid a couple about $1,000 to stay at their home and stayed there for seven days before fleeing on Friday.
The fugitives managed to escape from the prison through a hole they dug in one of the walls of their cells located next to each other.
Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva was furious when he learned that two prisoners escaped from the Mossoró Federal Penitentiary by knocking down a section of their cell wall. “We want to know how these citizens dug a hole and no one saw it,” he said.
Both were members of a faction of the Red Command based in Rio de Janeiro.
Cabral and da Silva had been transferred to the Mossoró Federal Penitentiary in September 2023 after being involved in a rebellion at the Antônio Amaro Alves prison in Rio Branco, which left five dead.
They failed to escape together from the Antônio Amaro Alves prison in 2013 after they cut the iron bars of their cell and used them to build a ladder to reach the roof before guards arrested them, Globo News reported.
Before Cabral and da Silva, no prisoners had escaped from the federal prison system, which oversees five maximum-security prisons.
According to the National Secretariat of Criminal Police, prison guards prevented two escapes in 2023: one in the Mossoró Federal Penitentiary and another in the Catanduvas Federal Penitentiary.