Gunshots rang out Monday during a campaign rally by a top ally of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, Tarcisio de Freitas, forcing the Sao Paulo gubernatorial candidate to take cover during a visit to a favela.
Authorities said they were investigating whether the shots were directed at Freitas, Bolsonaro’s former infrastructure minister, who is running for governor of Brazil’s wealthiest and most populous state and is seen as a potential successor to the far-right president.
Freitas was visiting a university campus in Paraisopolis, the second-biggest slum in Sao Paulo.
“We were attacked by criminals during a visit to the first Paraisopolis University Hub,” he wrote on Twitter.
“One criminal was shot,” he added, without further details.
Officials said one person had been arrested.
Brazilian media carried images of Freitas, 47, and his team ducking and taking cover inside a building.
Bolsonaro told reporters at the presidential palace in Brasilia that officials were still investigating what happened.
“Everything’s still preliminary. I don’t want to get ahead of myself,” said the president, who is himself running for re-election in Brazil’s October 30 runoff vote, facing leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
But “whether this targeted (Freitas) or not, it’s a signal he needs to worry even more about his security,” he added.
Bolsonaro’s security cabinet chief, Augusto Heleno, said Freitas and his team had been evacuated safely.
Current Sao Paulo Governor Rodrigo Garcia, who lost to Freitas and Lula ally Fernando Haddad in the first-round election on October 2, said in a statement he had ordered an “immediate investigation.”
“I just spoke with Tarcisio de Freitas, and he and his team are all fine. State police acted quickly and guaranteed everyone’s safety,” he said.
Freitas, who took 42 percent of the vote in the first round, and Haddad, who took 36 percent, are waging a hard-fought runoff battle mirroring the Bolsonaro-Lula showdown.
The polarizing campaign has seen sporadic episodes of violence. And Bolsonaro was famously stabbed in the abdomen during his 2018 presidential run.
But it was unclear politics was involved. Gunshots are a frequent occurrence in Brazil’s favelas, where violence involving heavily armed drug trafficking gangs, militia groups and the police are common.
