A devoted daughter became a police officer to help catch her father’s murderer — breaking down in tears as she helped finally arrest the killer 25 years later.
Gislayne Silva de Deus, of Roraima in northern Brazil, was just 9 when her dad, Givaldo Jose Vicente de Deus, was shot at point-blank range in 1999 over a $25 debt while playing pool.
His one-time friend Raimundo Alves Gomes, 60, was found guilty of the murder in 2013 but had long been on the run — until his victim’s daughter helped find him last month.
“When I saw him at the police station, I made a point of telling him who I was and that I had been responsible for carrying out the arrest warrant,” Silva, now 36, told local news outlet Nova1.
“I burst into tears,” she said. “It was an explosion of feelings that turned into tears of relief, because it seemed like this day would never come.”
Footage released by police shows a defeated-looking Gomes leaning back in a chair at the police station while Silva calmly tells him: “It’s because of me that you are here, and you are now going to pay.”
Gomes was then sentenced to 12 years in prison by a judge who upheld the earlier murder conviction, the outlet said.
Silva de Deus said the gunman left her and her five sisters orphans over a petty debt, which her dad had tried to pay back.
“He [Raimundo] left behind a broken family, with five children, and our mothers had to fight hard to raise us. This event could have led us down other paths, but our mothers always taught us to follow the right path,” she said, adding that they were encouraged to work hard in school.
She started studying law at 18 and — after stints as a lawyer and a prison warden — became a cop in July, immediately asking to work in the homicide squad to help track down her dad’s killer, she said.
She hopes her story will inspire others, especially children orphaned by violence, to trust the justice system.
“Today, I have a son, and what I want to pass on to him most is that, by acting correctly, he will be able to achieve his dreams without having to step on anyone,” she said.
“It is not necessary to seek revenge or act wrongly to achieve justice.”
