RIO DE JANEIRO: A policeman and four presumed criminals died and three people were wounded on Tuesday in a shootout that erupted during an attempted bank robbery in Piracicaba, a town in the interior of Brazil’s Sao Paulo state, the Civil Police reported.
The incident occurred about 10 a.m. on Tuesday at the Bradesco branch in the Vila Rezende neighborhood when a group of heavily armed robbers burst into the bank, police said.
The criminals subdued the people who were inside the bank and appropriated an undisclosed sum of money, the police added.
The attack, however, was foiled by an off-duty police officer who opened fire on the robbers when they tried to leave the bank.
The officer shot four of the alleged assailants dead, but he was fatally wounded in the process and died as he was being attended to in a local hospital.
Some of the attackers managed to flee, although without any of the loot, and others were arrested by police reinforcements who arrived on the scene shortly thereafter.
The Civil Police did not report how many people participated in the robbery or how many were arrested, but it said that among those arrested were two of the bank’s security guards.
