The 68-year-old man whose body was brought to a bank by his niece trying to get a loan was malnourished and may have been poisoned, authorities said.
An autopsy, obtained on Wednesday by the Brazilian media Metrópoles, showed that Paulo Braga’s death was caused by “bronchoaspiration and heart failure.”
The coroner’s office is awaiting the results of additional testing to determine whether the 68-year-old man was poisoned.
“These data corroborate the necroscopic finding of malnutrition and bronchoaspiration,” the report indicated. “Previous heart disease found also contributed to the death event.”
Rio de Janeiro police arrested Érika de Souza, 42, on Tuesday after she visited the bank with Braga’s body in an attempt to obtain a loan for 17,000 reais ($3,250) and tried to get him to sign.
Érika de Souza (pictured) was arrested by authorities in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Tuesday after trying to get her dead uncle, Paulo Braga, to sign a loan document at a bank while he sat in a wheelchair .
The images showed Érika de Souza instructing her uncle Paulo Braga to take her pen and encouraging him to sign a paper at the bank branch.
Video recorded by bank staff showed De Souza holding a pen and moving Braga’s hand to sign the document moments after he bowed his head.
In the footage she could be heard saying to Braga: ‘Dude, are you listening? You have to sign.’
De Souza then told the cashier, ‘He doesn’t say anything, that’s just how he is,’ and turned to his uncle and said, ‘If you’re not okay, I’ll take you to the hospital.’
The bankers were concerned about the woman’s behavior and called the police, who arrested her at the scene.
Paramedics performed CPR on Braga and discovered he was already dead and then discovered corpse marks behind his head indicating he had been dead for two hours.
De Souza told police he was alive when they visited the bank, a claim they have disputed.
She told investigators that Braga was discharged from an urgent care facility on Monday and told her he wanted a loan to buy a new television and cover the cost of repairs to his home.
De Souza said he picked him up at his residence on Tuesday and noticed he was weak. She added that he was unresponsive when they entered the bank.
A motorcycle taxi driver was questioned by police on Wednesday and said that Braga was alive when De Souza called him around 12:20 p.m. so he could help get him out of the house, according to newspaper O Globo.
“When I entered the house, Paulo was lying in bed,” he said. ‘I took Paulo by the arms, with the help of Erika, and put him in the car. I could see that he was still breathing and had strength in his hands.’
The bank employees began filming the couple and ended up calling an ambulance and the police while Érika de Souza used her hand to hold Paulo Braga’s head up and said: ‘Man, are you listening? You have to sign it. I can’t sign for you’
Police also spoke with the ride-sharing app driver who picked up Braga and de Souza at 12:26 p.m. and dropped them off at the mall at 12:52 p.m.
O Globo also had access to his testimony in which he said that he spent seven minutes alone with Braga in the car while De Souza went to look for a wheelchair at the shopping center.
‘He (Braga) even held the car door’, when they helped him into the wheelchair.
Surveillance videos showed Braga being placed in the wheelchair and pushed in the mall parking lot and also in the mall before reaching the bank.
The medical examiner’s office believes Braga may have died between 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.
