The trial of the National Police officer who killed the "zungueira" Juliana Cafrique, in March 2019, starts this Friday.
The Provincial Court of Luanda had already scheduled a date for the beginning of the trial in December 2019. However, the starting session was eventually postponed until 10 January, the court source told NJOnline.
Gonçalo Sacala Canga, 36 years old, will be tried for the crime of voluntary homicide. The officer is accused of shooting the street vendor Juliana Cafrique on 12 March 2019 in Bairro do Rocha Pinto. According to the indictment, Gonçalo Canga was on patrol in that neighbourhood when he noticed that there was an irregular sale in that area. Soon the officer, together with his colleagues, began to confiscate the sellers' goods, putting them in his car.
In the middle of the confusion, Juliana Cafrique resisted the police and refused to leave the premises. Faced with the seller's resilience, the officers decided to drive their car over the seller's goods and ruined her sales.
Chaos settled in and the salesmen continued to resist to the police orders. They began to remove the goods from the police car. It was at this moment that the officer, now on trial, decided to pull out his gun and fire two shots, one of which mortally hit the 29 year-old saleswoman Juliana Cafrique.
The salesmen, seeing what happened, became angry with the officers and started throwing stones.
At the time, the then police director apologized for what had happened, saying that nothing justified the death of Juliana Cafrique. The commander general of the National Police apologized to the seller's family.
