Story By: Ana Marjanovic, Sub-Editor: Michael Leidig, Agency: Newsflash
The teenage girl who fatally shot her friend in the face at point-blank range following an alleged argument – possibly about the killer’s new boyfriend – has been freed from prison after serving just 17 months.
The girl, then aged 15, shot Isabele Ramos Guimaraes, 14, with her boyfriend’s father’s gun in the bathroom of the former’s family’s swanky condo in Cuiaba, west-central Brazil on 12th July 2020.
The shooter – who cannot be named for legal reasons – told police that the gun had gone off accidentally, but investigators later came to the conclusion that it had been intentionally fired.
Isabele’s mother Patricia Ramos claimed at the time that the two girls had become distant in the wake of Isabele’s friend’s relationship with her boyfriend.
She said Isabele had described her friend’s boyfriend as jealous and manipulative and said he kept his girlfriend away from her friends.
The case rocked Brazil due to the atypical profile of the perpetrator – a teenage girl from a well-to-do background.
And now the case has hit headlines again, after the 3rd Criminal Chamber of the Court of Justice of Mato Grosso state overturned the murder conviction and replaced it with a conviction for manslaughter – meaning there was no intention to kill and the shooting was an accident.
As a result, she was released on Wednesday night (8th June).
The girl, now 16, had been serving a maximum three-year sentence – handed down on 19th January last year – at a correctional facility in Cuiaba, with the justice system ruling biannually on whether to keep her behind bars.
The decision to free her is likely to anger Isabele’s family and friends, who had previously demonstrated against the killer’s potential early release.
Patricia said in April last year that Isabele “was brutally murdered, in a cowardly way”.
She added: “As long as I’m around, I’ll fight for justice.”
Patricia believes the girls argued moments before the trigger was pulled. The perpetrator denied this accusation at the time.
