An employee at a Tattoo parlor in Brazil was taken into custody after it was discovered he had tattooed the phrase “I am a thief” on a teenager’s forehead. This shameful mark was apparently the consequence of the teen attempting to rob a handicapped man’s bike away from him.
Two men, Maycon Wesley and Ronildo Moreira de Araujo, face torture charges after Wesley, the tattoo artist, defaced the teen’s forehead as the other man taped the event.
The tattoo artist scrawled “Eu sou ladrao e vacilao” which in English means “I am a thief and a loser”. This happened shortly after the teen was allegedly caught in a theft stealing a bicycle from a man with only 1 leg.
The teen alleged that he wasn’t trying to steal the bike but that he was intoxicated and tripped over it.
After the teen’s altercation with the disabled man, the two perpetrators approached the kid and cornered him, took him inside and began to tattoo him.
The teen told a local news outlet:
“I asked them to make the tattoo on my arm but they said they would do it on my forehead and started laughing…I begged them to break my arms and legs instead.”
The teen’s Mother and Father told law enforcement that their son boy had been missing for over a week but then identified him the moment they viewed the footage of him being tattooed.
The BBC has reported that the authorities promptly charged the two men responsible for the act. Araujo and Wesley confessed to tattooing the young male but said that they had let him go afterward, and were not sure where he went. The local law enforcement hadn’t determined if the teen really stole the elderly individual’s bicycle.
The teen is purported to have mental problems and has dealt with substance abuse. Eventually, the boy returned home to his family on June 11th.
There has been a campaign started at vakinha.com.br on the teen’s behalf so that he can get the tattoo removed. So far it’s garnered over $6,000.
Many commenters online seemed to agree with the sentiment that the two men arrested went way too far with their act, even if the boy had committed the bicycle theft.