Police officer dies after being shot in head during pharmacy robbery response in Sorocaba, Brazil.
NEWS:
A São Paulo Military Police officer died after being shot in the head during a response to a pharmacy robbery in Sorocaba, Brazil, in the early hours of Saturday, April 11, 2026.
The officer was identified as Matheus Almeida Rodrigues, 28, a member of the Force Tactical unit of the 55th Interior Military Police Battalion. He was wounded during the police response to a robbery at a 24-hour pharmacy in the Campolim area of Sorocaba, in São Paulo state.
The confrontation happened shortly before 2 a.m. near Avenida Carlos Comitre, after police were called to the robbery. Police records reported that the group used a silver Volkswagen Virtus with plates from Volta Redonda, Rio de Janeiro. Authorities later said the vehicle had been stolen in Franco da Rocha, in the São Paulo metropolitan area, earlier that month.
Security footage shows suspects moving boxes into a car before police vehicles arrive. Officers get out and gunfire follows near the vehicle. The video records the armed confrontation and the moment Rodrigues is hit and falls. Later reporting on the footage said the fatal shot was fired about one minute after the main exchange of gunfire appeared to have been controlled.
The video does not, by itself, establish who fired the round that struck the officer. Investigators requested forensic exams to determine the origin of the fatal shot.
Rodrigues was taken to the Conjunto Hospitalar de Sorocaba in serious condition. He underwent surgery, but died from the head wound. Three suspected robbers were also killed during the confrontation.
A fourth suspect, described as a 19-year-old man, was arrested in flagrante after the incident and was recognized by victims, according to information attributed to state security officials. Initial reports based on police records also mentioned a fifth person who fled the scene. No confirmed public outcome for that possible fifth suspect was found in the available open reporting.
Police said the robbery involved cash and boxes of weight loss medication. Later coverage of the investigation described the stolen products as weight loss pens and said the group had taken about R$3,000 and 63 boxes of medication. That detail was presented as part of the police investigation and should be treated as information attributed to investigators, not as something visible in the shooting footage.
The case was formally recorded as commercial robbery, receiving a stolen vehicle, vehicle location and seizure, and death resulting from police intervention. The categories reflect the police registration of the occurrence and the deaths of the suspects during the confrontation.
A Military Police inquiry was opened to examine the conduct and circumstances of the intervention. The Civil Police also investigated the robbery and the shootout. Forensic work was requested from the state criminalistics and medical-legal institutes.
The police officers who took part in the action were later removed from street duty while the investigations continued. That measure was reported after the case drew scrutiny over the sequence captured by security cameras, especially the timing of the shot that killed Rodrigues.
On April 22, 2026, the Civil Police concluded the inquiry into the pharmacy robbery and sent it to court. At that stage, investigators said more details could not be released because complementary forensic reports were still pending.
Rodrigues had joined the Military Police in 2019. He had previously served in Osasco and had been assigned to Sorocaba since the previous year.
News story written by DarkGore.
