Woman whose dad was murdered when she was nine becomes cop to catch his killer

A police officer who signed up to avenge her murdered father helped to arrest his killer 25 years after the crime.

Gislayne Silva de Deus, from Boa Vista, northern Brazil, was nine when her dad Givaldo was shot dead in a bar over a debt worth £20 in 1999.

Givaldo’s killer, Raimundo Alves Gomes, took his victim to hospital but disappeared afterwards.

He was caught, put on trial and sentenced to 12 years in 2013 but was allowed to stay out of prison while fighting a series of appeals against the verdict.

After the final appeal was rejected in 2016, a warrant was issued for his arrest but he disappeared again.

The news devastated Gislayne, who was now in her late 20s working as a lawyer, and the rest of Givaldo’s family.

‘We got used to living with uncertainty, always wondering if we would ever be able to locate him,’ she told Brazilian news site G1.

In 2022, Gislayne became a prison officer, saying she ‘always imagined [Gomes] arriving there to serve his sentence’.

But it remained a daydream, even after one of her uncles spotted Gomes in the city where the murder took place later that year.

The uncle alerted authorities, but Gomes disappeared before they could arrest him.

She then applied to join her state’s Civil Police, becoming a clerk in July this year, and immediately applied to join its murder unit.

Once in, she helped to gather information about Gomes’ whereabouts – a rural area just outside Boa Vista – and issued the formal order for his arrest.

Gislayne, now 35, was finally able to confront her father’s killer back at the police station and tell him why he had been caught, in a moment which was filmed and shared online.

‘It’s because of me that you are here,’ she told him, adding: ‘You are now going to pay.’

It took a moment to muster up the courage to face him, Gislayne said, continuing: ‘When I saw the man who was responsible for my dad’s death was finally in handcuffs, I couldn’t hold back the tears.

‘It was an explosion of feelings that turned into tears of relief, as it seemed like this day would never come.

‘My dad was an honest and hard-working man. He encouraged us to study and spent time helping us with homework and times tables. He was always very close to us and caring.

‘My sisters and I went through really difficult times after we lost him. What happened could easily have sent us on a different direction, but our mother always taught us to follow the right path.’

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