With the full-scale “manhunt” for 44-year-old Pedro Dias ‘suspended’ last (Wednesday) night in favour of a more discreet police presence on the ground, news is that sharp-shooters now have orders to kill the Rambo-style fugitive on sight.
Militarily-trained Dias is thought to be far too dangerous to approach.
With fears in the area where he was supposedly “run-to-ground” on Tuesday running rampant, locals are living behind locked doors, with travelling salespeople no longer in evidence.
Wednesday saw a purported sighting 200 kms away in Montalegre (click here), but this has since been discounted by police after they went through CCTV footage.
Much about this horror which started with the killing of GNR agent Carlos Caetano in the early hours of Tuesday morning is still unclear.
News reports are not giving any information about the other men believed to have been surprised while stealing copper from a construction site in Termas da Cavaca (Aguiar da Beira), concentrating only on Dias, suggesting he was the only shooter and solely responsible for the gruesome trail of bloodshed which left two people dead, one “brain-dead” in hospital and two others (both GNR agents) suffering from gunshot wounds.
The last sighting of Dias remains at 3pm on Tuesday, when he shot his last victim and made off into dense countryside on foot near the villages of Candal and Póvoa das Leiras.
Since then, the policeman he tied up and shot in the head before shooting a young couple has recovered enough to give a statement, in which he is reported to have said that Dias acted with violence and “great rapidity”.
Believing his GNR victim to be dead, he simply “opened the door” of the car belonging to Luís and Liliane Pinto – after the couple stopped to see what was going on – and shot them both at close range, before making off in their vehicle.
GNR REFUTE ORDER TO KILL
The GNR has refuted news sources’ story of any order to kill runaway fugitive Pedro Dias.
In a strongly worded statement released over Facebook, the police force explains that “the use of force is defined by the law, and rules and regulations” of the GNR institution.
“Despite the gravity of the facts in which the institution lost one of its agents, at no point was the mentioned order given”, says the statement.
Journalists running with the news, appear to have heard about the order by police on the ground in São Pedro do Sul.
