Due to a social media search by a murder victim’s mom, a runaway cop who fled from Brazil after conviction for the murder of her son, a young law student, has been arrested in Florida.
The former police-officer killed the student outside a nightclub 10 years ago. The boy was not the intended victim. The boy’s mom found the convicted killer on Instagram five years ago, and police were able to track him down in Florida last week.
The mom finally found some justice for the killing of her son.
Omar Assaf, Jr., 42-years-old, was taken into custody by US Marshalls on Tuesday. The former police officer murdered 19-year-old Thiago Klemtz de Abreu Pessoa in Brazil, while off duty.
Assaf was sentenced to 16 years in prison in Brazil, but he fled the country and has spent the past ten years living in the Kissimmee, Florida area, where he ran a furniture business.
The murder was known in Brazil as the “Bar Harmonia massacre,” named after the place where the cop shot Pessoa, thinking he was someone else.
The murder occurred in the summer of 2009, when Assaf and a friend went to Bar Harmonia.
Assaf was carrying a semi-automatic pistol when he entered the bar, but it was confiscated by the bar’s security staff and put in a safe while he was inside.
During the evening, a fight broke out on the dance floor. Assaf got involved and the fight was broken up.
After the agitator, a bar customer, Targino Marchiore, was kicked out of the bar, a fight broke out on the sidewalk with a bar bouncer. Targino Marchiore punched the bouncer and pulled out a handgun.
Pessoa, at the wrong place at the wrong time, was standing with his friends on the sidewalk in front of the bar.
Shots were fired and Pessoa and his friend ran to their car, at which point Assaf appeared and started shooting. Pessoa was the victim and was killed.
“What makes me indignant is that my son’s murderer is living free in Florida, and justice in Brazil remains slow,” Klemtz told Brazilian newspaper Jornal Nossa Gente last year. “This is outrageous, my son’s death will not go unpunished.”