The Federal Police (PF) and the Public Ministry of the State of Rio de Janeiro (MP-RJ) arrested this Wednesday, the 28th, the owner of a junkyard Edilson Barbosa dos Santos, known as Orelha, who was responsible for dismantling the vehicle used by the murderers of Rio councilor Marielle Franco and driver Anderson Gomes, in 2018.
Orelha was denounced by the Public Ministry in August 2023 for impeding and embarrassing the investigations into the case. He was arrested in Duque de Caxias, in Baixada Fluminense (RJ).
According to the PF, the prisoner was taken to the Regional Superintendence, in Rio, and will be sent to the prison system.
Investigators arrived at the name of Edilson Barbosa, as one of the suspects, after the plea bargain of former military police officer Élcio Queiroz. In his statement, Queiroz admitted to having been the driver of the vehicle used in the attack against Marielle and accuses former PM Ronnie Lessa of being the author of the shots. According to Élcio Queiroz, the Cobalt vehicle was destroyed on orders from Ronnie Lessa.
“After throwing the pieces of the license plate and the capsules, we left Maxwell (Simões, former firefighter) at his mother’s house, because he said he would ‘stir up’ the disappearance of the car. He said he would look for an acquaintance of ours, whose His nickname was Orelha, who once had a car agency and worked with car insurance and nowadays has an ice cream shop (…) After that I found out through Maxwell that this car actually disappeared and that it went to Morro da Pedreira, where there was a car dismantled. When I asked Orelha if the car had disappeared, he cut me off and didn’t talk”, said Élcio in a statement.
The meeting with Orelha was the last moment that Élcio and Lessa would have had contact with the car, according to the statement. “That’s how we disposed of the vehicle and the capsules,” she said.
According to investigations, former firefighter Maxwell Simões, known as Suel, mentioned in the statement, would have helped hide weapons the day after the arrests of Ronnie Lessa and Élcio de Queiroz, denounced as perpetrators of the crimes.
Executioners tried to destroy evidence
The PF reported that, after executing Marielle, those under investigation threw pieces of the license plate of the vehicle used in the crime onto the railway lines of Rio de Janeiro’s urban trains. Two days after the execution, Orelha was ordered to “disappear with the car”. The destination would have been a dismantlement in Morro da Pedreira, in the North Zone of the city.
Estadão tries to contact the Edilson Barbosa dos Santos defense.