In June 2020, a five-year-old boy, the son of a maid who was out walking her employer’s dog, was put, unsupervised, into an elevator by her boss, who was supposed to be looking after him. He exited in an unsecured part of the building and fell to his death from the ninth floor. For a while his mother became the face of Black Lives Matter in Brazil. Six years on, the wealthy white woman responsible for her son’s death has yet to serve any of the sentence for her crime. Urariano Mota takes up the story.

On 2nd June 2026, the valiant Mirtes Renata asked, and more than asked, demanded: “Do not let me fight alone.”

Her story is a tragic and eloquent portrait of poor and black people in Brazil. Six years ago, on 2nd June 2020, Mirtes was a domestic worker in a luxury apartment building in Recife, a city in the Northeast of Brazil. She went down from the apartment to walk her employer Sari Corte Real’s well-cared-for dog. When she was on the building’s pavement, she suddenly heard a thud. Sensing her nightmare, she ran to see what had happened. And she saw: her little son Miguel, fallen from above, was on the ground.

To this day, Mirtes Renata is desperate because Sari Corte Real remains free. Sari is the person Mirtes entrusted to look after Miguel, who was five years old. Sari left the child to fend for himself. Presumptuous, isn’t it? A maid handing over her child to be looked after by her employer! What world are we living in? Absurd.

The case of little Miguel, the son of domestic worker Mirtes, reveals the horror of class injustice in Brazil—and in this crime, the current custom of killing Black people among Brazilians.

I’m not exaggerating. There can be no exaggeration in the face of a Black child, regarded with contempt, who fell from the ninth floor to the ground. We can’t even talk about this death as a tragedy, such is the ubiquity of how Black life is nullified, from the slums in Brazil where they are hunted, to the domestic servants who work and serve under ‘friendly’ (read: false) relationships. The case of Miguel Otávio and Mirtes Renata, son and mother, is the very model of a crime that goes unpunished—or certainly not punished severely enough— a bloody crime from which we can draw lessons before, during, and after its occurrence.

Minutes before Miguel fell, Madame was having her nails painted at home. She had been left with the little son of her maid, Mirtes, who had gone out to walk her mistress’s dog. The child was left to play with Madame’s daughter. (Remember the little Black slaves who distracted the children of the plantation owners?) But Miguel’s misfortune was that he loved his mother too much. When she left, he started crying, begging for her shelter and lap.

But why did the little boy, besides loving his mother, suddenly miss her affection so much? Only those who feel and have felt this lack would be able to tell. The fact is that the boy, stubborn, rebellious, annoyed the mistress so much that she had no choice but to leave him to his fate. In other words: You want your mother? Go on. Good luck. In the video footage, the mistress appears to be taking the convict to his fate as a little Black boy. Then she returns to her beautiful nails.

Suddenly, a thud, a small crash. When bones hit the ground from a great height, they sound like bombs. I’ve witnessed the sound of a man who threw himself from the top of the Holiday Building in Boa Viagem, Recife. But never a little boy. That’s why I give him a little bang for the noise of his broken bones.

Mirtes Renata Santana de Souza’s successive interviews reveal a progression of lights turning on in her consciousness. What at first seemed like a tragic accident was later revealed to be a strange, almost pitying feeling when her beloved boss told her she was going to be arrested. Mirtes asked her: “How can you be arrested if you haven’t committed a crime?” In the question, there was a suspicion lurking in the distance, higher than the ninth floor of the Twin Towers, from which Miguel fell. But suspicion is a pain that comes and goes, even if it leaves some confusing clues.

At first, Mirtes didn’t want to see the images of Miguel’s last minute in the elevator. But then she did, and what she saw caused her to revolt: the mistress led the most beautiful little Black man in her life and pushed the button for a floor of the elevator. She pushed it—or indicated it—which doesn’t diminish her crime of abandoning the five-year-old child. And she went back to her manicure.

Suddenly, there was a small bang. But not so sudden, because it was predictable.

Now, six years later, Mirtes Renata is in utter despair. She posted on 2nd June 2026: “It is desperate. Six years without hearing my son’s voice. Six years without being able to hug him. Six years watching appeals, postponements of the convict’s imprisonment, and time passing before my eyes. Last week, the Tribunal de Justiça de Pernambuco (Pernambuco Court of Justice) upheld the seven-year closed-regime sentence for Sari Corte Real for abandonment of a helpless person resulting in death. The decision was upheld by a single vote difference: six to five. And even though she was convicted, she continues to be free, while appealing.

“I look at all this and ask myself: How much longer? How many more years does a mother have to wait? My son was only 5 years old. The justice system has already taken longer to respond than the time Miguel had to live. I am afraid that slowness will prevail. I am afraid that the delay will turn into impunity. I am afraid that the convicted keeps living her life, travelling, smiling and building new memories, while my son’s story remains stuck in endless resources.

“We have no more time. June cannot end without a concrete response for Miguel. June cannot end without the condemned being imprisoned. 2026 cannot be another year of waiting. After six years, I only have the strength to make one request: Do not let me fight alone. This fight is for everyone. This fight needs to be for everyone. Justice for Miguel.”

Class justice wants to silence the woman who today has the highest awareness of her condition as a mother, a Black woman and someone wronged. But she is not alone in her struggle. With Mirtes are journalists, writers, intellectuals, socialists and the outraged people. Justice for Miguel!

Urariano Mota is a writer and journalist, author of novels that narrate the horror of the Brazilian dictatorship, such as Soledad no Recife (Soledad in Recife) and Never-Ending Youth.

Image: Recife https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Recife_-_In%C3%ADcio_da_Avenida_Boa_Viagem.jpg Source: http://www.copa2014.gov.br/pt-br/dinamic/galeria_imagem/40619 Author: Portal da Copa/ME, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Brazil license.