Killing of João Alberto Silveira Freitas

On the night of November 19, 2020, João Alberto Silveira Freitas, a 40-year-old Black man working as a service provider, was beaten and killed by asphyxiation by security guards at a Carrefour hypermarket in the Passo d'Areia/Parthenon area of Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Freitas had been born in 1980 in Humaitá, was the second son of a driver, had two marriages and four children, and was described by locals as friendly and happy.

According to the account reconstructed from witnesses, a disagreement occurred inside the store, after which two security guards — Giovane Gaspar da Silva, a temporary Military Brigade police officer without authorization to work as a private security guard, and Magno Braz Borges, a licensed guard whose bond with the security firm Vector was not on file with Brazil's Federal Police — followed Freitas to the parking lot along with Carrefour inspector Adriana Alves Dutra. Freitas struck Silva, and the two guards then grabbed him, knocked him to the ground within roughly fifteen seconds, and continued beating him with punches and kicks despite intervention attempts by witnesses and his wife. Witnesses reported Freitas asking for help and to be allowed to breathe. A delivery man who filmed the incident said the guards tried to delete the footage and threatened him. Dutra and other employees reportedly intimidated bystanders and obstructed filming and assistance. Freitas died from mechanical asphyxiation after the guards applied weight to his back; only after the beating ended and several minutes had passed did Dutra call emergency medical services, allegedly giving a false account of the incident on that call.

Freitas was buried on November 21, 2020, at São João Municipal Cemetery in Porto Alegre, his coffin wrapped in the flag of Esporte Clube São José, a football club he supported.

The killing prompted large anti-racism protests across Brazilian cities including Porto Alegre, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte, Recife, Salvador, and Manaus, with demonstrators invoking "Black lives matter" slogans and calling for a boycott of Carrefour. Public officials, judiciary figures, the Chamber of Deputies, the Federal Senate, the United Nations, and Amnesty International issued statements addressing the killing and its racial dimensions; President Jair Bolsonaro did not offer condolences and questioned the existence of racism in Brazil.

On December 11, 2020, police delegate Roberta Bertoldo indicted six people — security guards Giovane Gaspar da Silva and Magno Braz Borges, and Carrefour employees Adriana Alves Dutra, Paulo Francisco da Silva, Kleiton Silva Santos, and Rafael Rezende — for triple-qualified homicide. The State Public Prosecutor's Office formally charged all six on December 17, 2020, and a judge accepted the complaint, finding sufficient evidence of authorship. As of the source's reporting (February–June 2021), Silva and Borges remained in custody, Dutra was under house arrest, and the case was proceeding toward trial reconstruction. In June 2021, Carrefour reached a 120-million-real Conduct Adjustment Term agreement, which was criticized by the Black Coalition for Rights as inadequate reparation.