Federal Prosecution Service calls for arrest of military police officer for killing medical student

The Federal Public Prosecutor's Office (MPF) has spoken out in favor of the preventive detention of military police officer Guilherme Augusto Macedo, a defendant in the death of medical student Marco Aurélio Cardenas Acosta, in November of last year, in the capital of São Paulo state. The opinion, signed on October 9, 2026, by Deputy Attorney General of the Republic José Elaeres Marques Teixeira, was submitted to the Superior Court of Justice (STJ). Given this position, it is up to the STJ to review the appeal and decide on the issuance of the measure. The police officer fired at the 22-year-old young man, who was unarmed, with a point-blank shot, after a dispute involving the rearview mirror of a patrol car. According to the MPF document, the officer chased the victim on foot because of a slap the young man gave to the patrol car's rearview mirror, without causing material damage to the vehicle. Marco Aurélio sought shelter in the lobby of the hotel where he was staying, where he was reached by Macedo and by another military police officer who was at the location, Bruno Carvalho do Prado. In the description of the facts contained in the opinion, the young man was unarmed and shirtless, and posed no concrete risk to the officers' physical integrity. Even so, Marco Aurélio was held at gunpoint, according to images from the officers' body cameras that were widely circulated in the press. After a kick from Prado against the victim, the officer fell to the ground. It was then that Macedo fired at the student's abdomen. The injuries resulting from the shot caused Marco Aurélio's death. For the MPF, the disproportionality of the reaction, the use of an institutional weapon against an unarmed person, and the circumstances of the shooting demonstrate the concrete gravity of the case and the dangerousness of the defendant. The MPF considers that the precautionary measures previously imposed are insufficient to guarantee public order. "The case law of the Superior Court of Justice admits that the concrete gravity of the offense, evidenced by the modus operandi and by circumstances that denote the dangerousness of the agent, constitutes a suitable basis for the issuance of preventive detention based on the guarantee of public order," says an excerpt from the opinion.