RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) – A Brazilian man and two women have been arrested on suspicion of putting 42 metal sewing needles into the body of a 2-year-old boy in what may have been an occult or religious act, police said yesterday.
The boy, whose condition is serious but stable, was rushed to a specialist medical centre in Salvador, the capital of northeastern Bahia state, after doctors found two needles were dangerously close to his heart.
The boy was taken to a hospital in the remote town of Ibotirama by his mother last week after he complained of pain.
X-rays taken by doctors, and shown on Brazil’s Globo news network’s website, clearly show dozens of needles deep in his body, some clustered near his lungs and others in his abdomen, neck and legs.
Police in Ibotirama said that the boy’s stepfather, 30-year-old Roberto Carlos Magalhaes, had been arrested and confessed to putting the needles into the boy’s body.
He was helped by two women, one of whom was in a relationship with him and who was known to carry out religious ceremonies at her house, a police officer in Ibotirama told Reuters by telephone.
“She wanted him to live with her and leave the mother of the boy,” said the police officer, who asked not to be identified.
He said the woman was known to be a practitioner of candoble, an African-Brazilian religion, and had provided “other (religious) services.”
Surgeons had planned to operate on the boy but cancelled the surgery after deciding it was too dangerous and should be done at the specialist unit in Salvador, Dr Fabio Contelle at the hospital in Barreiras town said in an interview with Globo TV.
The boy had been moved to Barreiras from the smaller hospital in Ibotirama after doctors realized the seriousness of his condition.
The A Tarde newspaper in Bahia quoted the boy’s mother, Maria Souza Santos, as saying she suspected Magalhaes had been involved in some kind of “black magic.”
“My son didn’t like to go out with Roberto. I didn’t think he was capable of doing something bad to him,” she was quoted as saying.
