Judge Tiago Fernandes de Barros, from the 36th Criminal Court of Rio de Janeiro, acquitted this Tuesday (21) seven people accused of the crime of arson that occurred at Ninho do Urubu, as the Presidente George Helal Training Center, which belongs to Flamengo, is known.
The fire, on February 8, 2019, caused the death of ten teenagers and caused bodily injuries to three others. They were all young athletes from the club.
The acquittal is based on “the absence of demonstration of criminally relevant guilt and the impossibility of establishing a safe causal link between individual conduct and the ignition”.
Márcio Garotti, Flamengo’s financial director, Marcelo Maio de Sá, deputy director of assets, Claudia Pereira Rodrigues, responsible for signing the contracts, Danilo Duarte, engineer, Weslley Gimenes, engineer, Fábio Hilário da Silva, engineer, and Edson Colman, partner of the company responsible for maintaining air conditioning units, were acquitted.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office had requested the conviction of the seven defendants after hearing 40 witnesses in the long criminal investigation, which lasted four years since the case was reported to the Court, in January 2021.
Eleven people were reported to court, but the accusations against two of the accused were rejected because they were not linked to the incident; another was summarily acquitted on the understanding that his actions did not contribute to the crime and a fourth, former Flamengo president Eduardo Bandeira de Mello, reached the age stipulated in the Penal Code that would give him the right to have his sentence reduced, which resulted in the case becoming time-barred.
The acquitted defendants are people who occupied positions with interference in the CT, were responsible for the containers intended to house the teenagers and also for the maintenance of the air conditioning units.
For the Public Ministry, the tragedy could have been avoided. The criminal case pointed out that the CT operated without a license due to the absence of an approval certificate issued by the Fire Department. The place, according to the prosecutor’s office, had already been closed and fined several times.
Electrical irregularities and lack of preventive maintenance on air conditioning units are some of the failures highlighted by the investigation. The fire, according to the agency, started due to a short circuit inside one of the air conditioning units.
Furthermore, the containers that functioned as accommodation had one barred window per room, sliding doors that got stuck during the fire and a single exit door that was decentralized and far from room 1, where the ten young people died. All of this made it difficult for the teenagers to escape.
There was no fire-fighting system and there was material inside the steel sheets without flame-retardant treatment. This highly flammable material caused the fire to develop quickly, as shown by technical expertise.
