Escaped killer Danelo Souza Cavalcante was caught after an extensive search, Pennsylvania State Police said. He was arrested Wednesday after evading hundreds of investigators for two weeks, a conclusion that brought relief to worried residents of southeastern Pennsylvania who had spent sleepless nights as he hid in the woods, broke into suburban homes, to While going to get food, his appearance changed and among them fled shots fired from a rifle stolen from a garage, authorities said.
Cavalcante’s heat signal was picked up by an aircraft around 1 a.m., but storms prevented teams from tracking it further until morning, said Lt. Col. George Bivens of the Pennsylvania State Police. Meanwhile, tactical teams secured the area and later moved in with search dogs, Bivens said at a news conference. “They were able to move in very quietly. They had the element of surprise. “Cavalcante first realized he was surrounded,” Bivens said. Cavalcante – still armed with the rifle – tried to escape by crawling through thick brush, Bivens said, and he continued to resist when he was taken into custody after 8 a.m. He was bitten by a police dog and suffered a minor wound, he said.
Danelo Cavalcante in jail.Chester County Jail
The 34-year-old Brazilian national escaped from the Chester County State Prison west of Philadelphia last Thursday. He was serving a life sentence for the April 2021 murder of his ex-girlfriend Déborah Evangelista Brandão, whom he stabbed to death in front of their two children, aged seven and three. It was later revealed that authorities in the Brazilian state of Tocantins were also looking for him for the 2017 shooting of Valter Júnior Moreira dos Reis. The victim owed Cavalcante money for a car repair.
Police reported on Tuesday that the evening before, the fugitive had received a .22 caliber rifle with a scope and flashlight, which he had stolen from the garage of a single-family home. The homeowner spotted him and shot him several times with another pistol from his arsenal, but he was not hit.
The refugee found out about his sentence in August. On August 31, a few days before his life sentence began, he escaped from prison by climbing a wall. Security video footage captured the moment. In it, he can be seen absentmindedly walking towards a narrow passage made of exposed bricks in a T-shirt and white sneakers. He places his hands on one of the walls and his feet on the opposite wall and then begins to climb horizontally, without taking his eyes off the prison yard. Within seconds he disappears from view. The shot, worthy of a Buster Keaton film, is hypnotic. Cavalcante is only 1.50 meters tall, but he makes the feat seem easy. The guards described it as “crab walking.”
The convicted murderer then managed to get past the barbed wire that had been installed after another prisoner scaled the same wall and escaped. Cavalcante ran across the roof, scaled another fence, and got through more barbed wire. He was on the run for 13 days before being caught on Wednesday.
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