Daughter becomes police officer to bring father’s murderer to justice 25 years later

A woman from Brazil who lost her father in a tragic murder as a child has fulfilled her mission to bring his killer to justice. Gislayne Silva de Deus, 36, became a police officer and helped arrest Raimundo Alves Gomes, the man who shot her father, Givaldo, over a minor debt in 1999.

The long-awaited arrest took place in September 2024, in Boa Vista, Brazil, after Gomes, now 60, had been on the run since 2016. Initially sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2013, Gomes evaded justice by disappearing after his appeal was rejected.

De Deus, who joined the police force and became a prison officer in 2022, had always hoped to bring her father’s killer to justice. “We got used to living with uncertainty, always wondering if we would ever be able to locate him,” she said in a Daily Mail report.

After years of uncertainty, her persistence paid off when her uncle spotted Gomes, allowing De Deus and her team to finally track him down. Upon his arrest, she confronted him, saying, “You’re going to pay for what you did.”

“When I saw the man who was responsible for my dad’s death finally in handcuffs,” De Deus shared, “I couldn’t hold back the tears.”