[ad_1]
More than 1,000 protesters attacked the Carrefour Brasil supermarket in the southern city of Porto Alegre on Friday after security guards beat a black man to death in the store.
The Globo News channel quoted Rio Grande do Sul state military police as saying that the killing, which sparked protests across Brazil, occurred Thursday night when a store employee called security after the man threatened to attack her.
Fans posted images of the deadly beating and a tribute to the black victim on social media. A person in local media said the victim was his 40-year-old son, Joao Alberto Silvera Freitas.
The G1 news website later reported that a preliminary analysis by the state forensic institute indicated that the cause of death could be suffocation.
Carrefour’s French affiliate in Brazil said in a statement on Friday that it deeply regrets what it described as this brutal death and said it had taken immediate steps to ensure that those responsible were punished in accordance with the law.
He said he would terminate the contract with the security company and fire the employee in charge of the store at the time of the accident and close the store out of respect.
And in Porto Alegre, on Friday afternoon, protesters distributed posters with the bloodied Carrefour logo and called for a boycott of the chain. They erected a sign in Portuguese that read “Black Lives Matter” and signs demanding retribution for the victim.
The protest turned violent on Friday night, when protesters broke windows and delivery cars in the Carrefour parking lot. A Reuters witness saw police firing tear gas at protesters.
In Sao Paulo, dozens of protesters smashed the facades of a Carrefour store with stones, ripped open the entrance doors and entered the building before dispersing.
In Rio de Janeiro, about 200 protesters chanted slogans in front of another Carrefour store.
