Cops have arrested a 35-year-old man for raping and killing his friend’s five-year-old daughter.

The police arrested the unnamed suspect shortly after he committed the alleged crime in the Brazilian municipality of Lajeado on Saturday, 4th September.

The victim has been named as Agatha Rodrigues dos Santos, who was buried in the Lajeado Municipal Cemetery on Monday, 6th September.

Her dead body was found floating in the Taquari River, close to her home.

According to the police, the girl’s mother had known the suspect for three months, and she had allowed him to take her young daughter to a nearby market on the day of the crime.

She said the man had been to her house five times, but it was the first time her daughter had gone for a walk with him alone. She denied being in a relationship with him.

The woman called the police when the man failed to bring her daughter back home.

Witnesses told the police they saw the man with the girl at the riverbank. When he was arrested, his clothes were wet and muddy and there were signs of a struggle having taken place.

He was taken to prison in Lajeado and will answer to the charges of statutory rape and murder.

He will answer to an additional charge of concealment of a human corpse if it is determined that the girl was already dead when she was thrown in the river.

According to reports, the suspect has a prior criminal record for illegal firearm possession, robbery and theft, and he had been arrested in January for intimidating his ex-partner.

Police chief Dinarte Marshall said: “It was a brutal crime of sexual violence followed by death in which the perpetrator, after carrying out the sexual act, threw the girl’s body in the river to cover up his vile act.”

The girl’s mother may also be charged after she told the police she had seen the suspect using cocaine moments before leaving her home with her daughter.

She may be charged with the crime of handing over a minor to an unfit person, which carries a penalty of one to two years in prison.

The suspect remains in preventive custody as the investigation continues.