Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Horror of Brit kayak woman’s last moments
Explorer shot and tortured by ‘drug gang’
BRITISH adventurer Emma Kelty was tortured and raped as she died after being shot by a drug gang in Brazil, it has been claimed.
A local said the ringleader spoke to him hours after the attack beside the Amazon and revealed details of the kayaker’s final moments.
The villager added: “When the men saw her tent they thought it belonged to a Colombian with drugs, so they started firing from about 50 metres away.
“The woman was hit in the arm. She started waving frantically and screaming for help.” The thugs cut off her hair with a knife while demanding to know where the supposed drugs were, the local said.
He added he was told she was stabbed then sexually assaulted by each man.
They dragged her to the fast-moving river and threw her in. The villager said ringleader Evanilson Gomes da Costa, 24, claimed there were four attackers.
A police chief has revealed the “stupid” gang alerted authorities to their crime by accidentally pressing a button on Emma’s GPS device that triggered an SOS. Jose Afonso Barradas Junior said “it would probably have remained an unsolved mystery” if not for the signal pinpointing the location of the murder.
The officer added that 43-year-old Emma’s body will never be found because “the fish have already eaten her”. He revealed one of the suspects has confessed to slitting her throat.
Villagers in Lauro Sodre, near the scene of the crime, say the seven men accused of murder are known drug users. Three were on the run last night.
Ringleader da Costa was killed by a rival gang on Tuesday, almost a week after ex-headteacher Emma, of Finchley, North West London, was murdered. She was on a 4,000-mile solo kayaking trip.