A warning shot fired into the air seems to have been what caused armed robbers to turn on a retired Lisbon policeman on New Year’s Eve, shooting him dead at close range.
Sixty-five-year-old José Ramos Paixão had apparently kept his old service revolver, which he carried with him when he went to collect his wife from her evening shift at an Amadora supermarket.
Walking in on two masked men in the process of raiding the place, he “tried to stop the assault” by shooting into the ceiling, writes Correio da Manhã today.
“But the two masked men did not think twice. They shot him at point-blank range”, said the paper.
With Paixão on the floor, with fatal injuries to his face and head, the thieves then grabbed the cash register and escaped “in the direction of Cova da Moura” – a neighbourhood already scarred by crime and violence.
The horror was witnessed by clients and staff of the Meu Super supermarket, and although Paixão was rushed to hospital, he died of his injuries a few hours later.
PJ police are now hunting the killers, with the help of images captured by overhead CCTV cameras.
Interviewed by CMTV after the attack, supermarket worker Edite Fernandes said it was the third attack at Meu Super since she had worked there, though “there has never been anything as serious as this before”.
Following his retirement from the PSP 10 years ago, Paixão had been working as a security guard in the capital’s prestigious Colégio Moderno school, added CM.
