Armed criminals seized city buses and turned them into barricades across streets in Cascadura, in Rio de Janeiro's North Zone, on Wednesday morning (Aug. 26), in retaliation for a Military Police operation in the Campinho and Fubá favelas. The raid, carried out by the 9th BPM (Rocha Miranda) and 18th BPM (Jacarepaguá) battalions, left one suspect dead and at least four people under arrest. G1 counted 19 buses used in the blockades and five detainees; Agência Brasil and the newspaper O Globo, citing the police's initial account and the Rio Ônibus bus operators' union, reported 18 buses and four arrests.

The man who died was identified by O Globo as Jeferson Ferreira da Silva, 19. According to the operation's command, armed men exchanged fire with officers and fled into a wooded area; Jeferson fell behind the group and was found unconscious by the police. The force says he suffered cardiac arrest and did not survive. A second suspect was shot and taken to the Carlos Chagas State Hospital, and the police had not disclosed his condition as of the latest updates. All those detained remain suspects under investigation, with no convictions in the case.

Timeline of the morning

• Early morning: teams from the 9th and 18th battalions enter Campinho and Fubá; according to the police, there is a shootout and the suspects flee toward the woods.
• Shortly after: one suspect suffers cardiac arrest during the escape and dies; another is shot and hospitalized; four are arrested.
• Late morning: criminals stop bus drivers and park the vehicles across Clarimundo de Melo street, Ernani Cardoso avenue and Dom Hélder Câmara avenue; a truck is also used as a roadblock.
• Around 12:30 p.m.: all buses had been released and routes began returning to normal, according to Rio Ônibus.

In all, Rio saw at least 54 bus lines diverted on Wednesday in traffic-orchestrated reactions to police operations, O Globo reported. In the Cascadura area alone, the Rio Ônibus union registered disruptions on 33 routes. In Água Santa, three lines were affected and one lane of the Linha Amarela expressway toward Barra da Tijuca was closed near the Covanca Tunnel, reopening shortly before noon, according to the concessionaire Lamsa.

In a statement, the Military Police secretariat said the criminals' goal was to "demobilize the teams" and listed the seized material: a pistol, a grenade, a radio communicator, six rifle magazines and a pistol magazine, plus drugs still being counted. Policing was reinforced with teams from Bope, the elite special-operations battalion, as well as the Shock Battalion, the Tactical Motorcycle Battalion, the Expressways Battalion and the 3rd BPM (Méier), besides crowd-control units, according to Agência Brasil.

"The criminal actions are a reaction to the Military Police's planned operations against the criminal faction operating in the communities of Campinho, Fubá, Morro do 18, Praça Seca and several others in Jacarepaguá," the force said, in a statement reproduced by O Globo.

Classes went ahead: by 12:15 p.m., no state school had closed, and municipal schools in Fubá and Campinho were holding in-person classes, according to the education secretariats. One primary care clinic suspended operations and two others canceled external activities such as home visits, the Municipal Health Secretariat said. People arrested in the act must be brought before the Civil Police, which opens the formal investigation; as of the latest updates, the Military Police had not said which station received the detainees nor released further findings on the death of Jeferson.