Marcelle Julia Araujo da Silva’s butchered remains were found after she had been raped and fed to a pack of dogs – noodle seller Zhaohu Qiu has been arrested
A noodle seller allegedly strangled a teenage girl he had drugged before raping her and dismembering her naked body before feeding her remains to a pack of pit bulls.
Marcelle Julia Araujo da Silva’s body was found on a building site in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on June 14, after dogs were seen tearing through a tarp. The teenage girl’s own family were said to have made the horror discovery on the second floor of a partially built home during a search. Shocking CCTV footage released later showed the moment a cart covered with a blue tarp was dragged into place, allegedly by the suspect Zhaohu Qiu.
The teenage girl was last seen two days before, on June 12, going into Qiu’s home in the early hours of the morning. Police said they believed Marcelle’s body parts were in the cart and Qiu had taken them to a second home he had been building where he planned to feed her to a pack of pit bulls.
The suspect fled the area but was tracked down by cops a few days later, in Sao Paulo, and was arrested in a joint operation by Civil Police of Rio de Janeiro and the Civil Police of São Paulo, according to CNN Brasil. He confessed to strangling the teenager to death and throwing her belongings into a nearby river during a police interrogation.
Qiu, also known as Xau, refused to tell police anything else during the interrogation. He was charged with femicide and concealing a corpse on July 1.
Police added the man Qiu lived with, also from China, had witnessed the crime but did not intervene. The unnamed man was later charged with failure to provide assistance.
Marcelle’s family said they had known the suspect for five years but never believed he was capable of any crime. Neighbours, however, told the police that Qiu would often invite girls back to his home and had doped them with drugs and drink before having sex with them.
A court decided Qiu had to be arrested and held because he posed a flight risk, according to G1. An excerpt from a police complaint said: “Xau is a foreigner and fled the scene of the crime, and it is likely and foreseeable that he will try to flee the country to avoid being held accountable for his crimes.”
This shocking case has since been forwarded to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. Qiu reportedly cooked and sold yakisoba noodle stir-fries at a small business he ran in the city.