Daylight Assassination Shocks São Paulo Airport: Businessman Gunned Down, Innocents Caught In Crossfire

by Gary Leff

A crypto businessman, Antônio Vinícius Lopes Gritzbach, was assassinated mid-afternoon at São Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport yesterday. The shooting, which injured three bystanders, occurred outside domestic Terminal 2, in an attack attributed to criminal gang First Capital Command (PCC) which controls significant drug trafficking routes and tentacles across South American and European crime networks.

A black vehicle pulled up to the terminal on Friday and gunmen fired upon Gritzbach and those nearby, as airport passengers scrambled for safety. The shooters escaped, abandoning their car abandoned near the airport.

Footage of the attack aftermath, circulated on social media, captures two victims lying wounded on the ground outside Terminal 2. The airport deployed police and medical teams, while additional law enforcement, including the military police, civil police, and highway patrol, joined to secure the scene.

Gritzbach had recently been cooperating with authorities on a plea bargain agreement involving his ties to the PCC which has engaged in armed robberies and attacks in Paraguay and partners with Bolivian cocaine producers and Italian mafia groups as well as engaging in illegal mining operations in the Amazon.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Brazilian authorities are worried about the “Mexification” of Brazilian organized crime. Meaning executions in broad daylight, such as this one.

    Brazil is still far from the levels of cartel violence in Mexico, but it’s getting worse.

  4. Yeah man. I saw the police stopping traffic on the way to Rio airport today. I better leave extra early for my flight.

  5. The danger of being a money laundering vehicle for dangerous dudes is that the gangs will scope out such people to take out of service.

  6. @ ryan. You must be a young man who hasn’t paid attention. Trump has a better history of attempting to “fix this” than the past 3 Democrat administrations and especially the last 4 years with biden/harris. Gangs rely on the power of quantity not quality and Trump addressed this more so than Harris did.

  8. OMG I was at Terminal 3 on Friday. Traffic was so bad due to the torrential rain that I missed my 5 pm flight. My Uber took 2 hr 45 min! There were a bunch of federal police that passed us but I didn’t think much of it!

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