Palma was gunned down by two unidentified
men on a motorcycle outside his home in Miguel Pereira, a suburb to the south
of Rio de Janeiro, and died at the scene, according to news reports. Palma was the
owner of the local weekly newspaper Panorama Regional, which was
circulated in several nearby municipalities.
News reports said the paper
had frequently alleged corruption in the local government. A friend of the publisher
told the
daily O Globo that Palma had received threats but had not
taken them seriously. The journalist’s wife also said he had received threats
but said she did not know who had made them, according to news reports.
In an issue of Panorma Regional published after Palma’s death, his colleague and
friend Belisa Ribeiro wrote that he had told her he received threats but did
say in relation to which report. In the article and on her Facebook page, Ribeiro said it
did not appear that Palma had had been investigating a big political scandal, but
that that he had regularly denounced typical small town problems, such as
faulty infrastructure and negligent local policies. If this was all it took to
get him killed, she wrote, “[then] I am scared.”
Military police captain Coronel César
Augusto de Souza told local journalists that authorities
were looking into a possible link to the newspaper’s reports but that all
possible motives were being investigated.