Mum shot in front of family when they strayed into a Rio slum after language mix-up
A BRITISH mother was shot in Brazil after her family’s hire car strayed into a lawless slum following a language mix-up.
She was saved when her former paratrooper husband sped to the nearest police station – despite gunmen blasting all four tyres.
Teaching assistant Eloise Dixon, 46, narrowly avoided being killed in front of her three daughters who were in the back seat, after the family’s efforts to ask where to buy water in Portuguese were misunderstood by locals.
Instead of being directed to the nearest supermarket, they were apparently shown the way to a dangerous shanty town called Agua Santa – ‘holy water’ in Portuguese.
Only when gangsters ordered them to turn back and began firing at the car did Maxwell Dixon, also 46, realise they had made a potentially fatal error.
One bullet struck his wife in the stomach while another, apparently aimed at her head, slammed into the headrest.
Last night Mr Dixon’s mother revealed her son – now a fireman – had bravely wrestled the Renault back to the highway and reached a police checkpoint from which his wife was taken to hospital for life-saving surgery.
Hazel Dixon, 76, said: ‘Maxwell is a very good driver and an ex-paratrooper.
‘He’s very, very good in an emergency. The gunman shot out the tyres, but apparently he drove the car as fast as he could with four flat tyres to a safe area and to the nearest police station … It could have been so much worse.’
She added: ‘Obviously I sing his praises but I think he would have been really gutsy. He’s useful when it comes to the crunch because he’s as calm as can be.’
Foreign Office travel advice warns tourists that Brazil’s favelas, or shanty towns, are ‘unpredictably dangerous areas’ and are risky places to visit even with organised tours, adding: ‘Violence can occur at any time and overspill to areas close to the favelas.’
The well-travelled family, who are understood to live in Hayes
Husband’s a former paratrooper
near Bromley, south-east London, have previously travelled to Newfoundland and Cape Verde.
They flew to Rio de Janeiro last Monday with daughters Isabella, 13, Holly, eight, and Alice, seven, and were exploring the coast.
They were driving a hire car on the main road from Rio to Santos, near the holiday resort of Angra dos Reis, on Sunday when they stopped to ask where they could buy water, ‘agua’ in Portuguese.
But due to a mix-up they were directed to the slum – and were challenged by an armed gang.
When Mr Dixon refused to heed their demand to turn back, they fired a volley of bullets, one of which hit Mrs Dixon in the stom- ach. Images shown on Brazilian TV showed how another bullet struck the headrest where the mother of three had been sitting, missing her head by inches.
The two men who attacked the family were on the run last night.
Local police chief Bruno Gilaberte said the family ‘mistook the information they were given … Because of the language difficulties, there was some confusion.
‘They ended up going to the Agua Santa neighbourhood where they were targeted by criminals. They were shot at after failing to understand the order they were given to leave the area.’
The bullet missed Mrs Dixon’s vital organs and after a two-hour operation to remove it from her bowel she was last night recovering at Japuiba Hospital in Angra dos Reis. Rodrigo Muchelli, medical director, said: ‘ The bullet passed straight through her abdomen, and missed the vital organs and arteries. She was very lucky.’
Hospital staff said another bullet had ‘grazed’ Mrs Dixon’s upper body. She is expected to be transferred to a private hospital in Rio once she is well enough.
Mr Dixon served five years in the Territorial Army before he became a fireman in Bromley, south-east London, in 1998.
His mother, who lives in Woldingham, Surrey, added yesterday: ‘My son phoned me up at ten past nine last night and said Eloise has been shot. I had an hour before he phoned back and Eloise was just going in to theatre.’
The grandmother said she was overwhelmed with relief after hearing that her daughter-in-law was going to pull though.
She added: ‘It could have been absolutely horrendous … but she’s going to be OK. The bullet must have come through the car door and lost some of its velocity.’
Edward Paine, of South America tour specialists Last Frontiers, told the Daily Telegraph he would ‘ never recommend self- drives around any of Brazil’s large cities, especially for those who don’t speak or read Portuguese’.