Drug mule dies after cocaine capsule bursts
BRAZIL - A Brazilian mother recorded a distressing farewell video to her family after a cocaine capsule she was smuggling inside her stomach burst, causing her to overdose. Deyse Ricarte, 28, was carrying 71 grams of cocaine from Brazil to Portugal inside dozens of pellets when one of them burst, police say. A panicked Ricarte, who has an 11-year-old son, sent the video from her Lisbon hotel room to a friend back home after she began to feel unwell. In the footage she can be seen patting her chest several times and breathing heavily.
‘Do you think my face is swollen or is it normal?’ she asks the camera.
‘I think I’m going to die, my friend. Oh Lord, help me. My friend talk to my mum and tell her I love her and my dad. I’m not going to make it. God help me.’
Ricarte even sent a picture of the hotel’s business card to her friend so she could raise the alarm.
She flew from Belo Horizonte, south east Brazil on July 8 and was found dead at dawn the following day in the Sao Pedro Hotel.
Police believe she agreed to smuggle the drugs in return for £2,350.
Ricarte also spoke to her boyfriend in Brazil who lived with her.
The family friend, who declined to identify herself, told reporters the boyfriend ‘talked to Deyse for about two hours until she gave her last breath and fell back.’ According to her family, ‘Deyse suffered a sudden death’.
The autopsy report issued by Portuguese authorities indicated ‘drugs without authorisation were detected’ in her stomach.
Staff at the Lisbon hotel told Record TV that a man came to reception looking for the young woman, when she didn’t answer the phone, hotel security entered the room and found her dead. The family friend said Ricarte had a dream of doing plastic surgery and may have agreed to smuggle the drugs to Europe to fund her plans.
‘The person who did this to her tried to do it with my friends,’ she alleged. ‘This person sent her there and said that she would have enough money to do her surgery. She didn’t like drugs, she was duped and sent to her death.’
Federal Police detective Ramon da Silva said those close to Ricarte are helping them with their inquiries.
‘We believe this is an international trafficking operation that could not be done by just one person,’ he said. ‘(Deyse) appears to have had support in Brazil and Portugal. Our suspicion is that the operation is based in Minas Gerais state because the passport was recently issued there and picked up on June 22 and she flew from Belo Horizonte (the state capital). (Daily Mail)