Brazilian radio host João Valdecir de Borba died on March 10, 2016, after unidentified assailants shot him in the doorway of the radio station where he worked in the town of São Jorge do Oeste, according to news reports, citing a witness.
Borba, 52, hosted three music programs at the station Radio Difusora AM in São Jorge do Oeste, a town of approximately 9,000 people in the southern Brazilian state of Paraná.
Borba–who had worked at the radio station for at least eight years–previously reported on crime, but had asked station managers for a different beat five months before his murder, according to a report in the Brazilian news website G1.
"I don’t know what motivated him to stop covering the police beat. One day he simply arrived and said he didn’t want to do it anymore. He didn’t have enemies, to my knowledge. He hadn’t received threats," his friend and colleague Andriano Zeni told G1.
Borba was working on a music program at the time of his death, according to news reports.
A report in the British tabloid The Daily Mail quoted a friend of Borba who said that the radio reporter received threats while on the air related to his remarks on politics. The Committee to Protect Journalists was unable to confirm that the reporter had received threats. Police told Brazilian media at the time that they were investigating various motives for the crime.
In September 2017, police investigators concluded that the killing was a result of an attempted robbery of the radio station and indicted Cleverson Martins Alves for the crime, according to news reports.
A report from the National Council of the Public Prosecutor’s Office reported the same finding — that Borba’s killing was due to an attempted robbery and was not related to his reporting.