Three people have been arrested over the murder of a British woman who went missing in Brazil while kayaking alone from the source of the Amazon to the Atlantic.

Emma Kelty, a 43-year-old primary school headteacher, was last heard from when she triggered a distress signal last Wednesday while in a notoriously dangerous area.

In a statement, police in the state capital Manaus said they had arrested one 17-year-old male on Monday in Codajás, 150 miles (240km) away, and a second 17-year-old on Tuesday in Lauro Sodré, where Kelty was killed. That Amazon community lies two hours from the town of Coari, where police arrested the third man, who has been named as Erinei Ferreira da Silva. They are also seeking four other suspects.

“People knew she had disappeared and indicated possible authors of her disappearance,” José Afonso Barradas Júnior, chief detective in Coari, told the Guardian.



The first arrested teenager told police Kelty was camped on Boieiro Island, which faces Lauro Sodré, when two people approached her. Five others then arrived and the group stole her belongings. She was shot twice with a sawn-off, 20 calibre shotgun and her body thrown in the river.

According to the teenager, the group then tried to sell her two mobile phones, a tablet computer and a GoPro camera in local communities.

Residents of Lauro Sodré reported having seen Kelty sail past the community in her canoe while still alive. Fire officers and the Brazilian navy are continuing to search for her body and have searched the area where it was allegedly thrown.

Kelty, from Finchley in north-west London, resigned as head of Knollmead primary school in Surbiton before going travelling and had kayaked on her own for 42 days of the 4,000-mile trip when she went missing.

She is believed to have pitched her tent before she set off her emergency locator flare last Wednesday, alerting the Brazilian navy. A massive search operation involving 60 people, including expert deep divers scouring the riverbed, was launched. On Friday, her abandoned kayak and belongings were found between Coari and Codajás.

River pirates are known to operate in the area. Local media reported two men were arrested in July after carrying out pirate attacks around Lauro Sodré and nearby communities.

“This region is a problematic region for pirates,” Barradas Júnior said. “It is a region that has pirates, they do robberies, and it is a disputed region because there are a lot of drugs coming from Colombia.” He said pirates had been known to attack Colombian and Peruvian drug traffickers, steal their supplies and throw their bodies in the river.

A struggle between rival Brazilian drug gangs to control the lucrative drug trade flowing down the Solimões river was blamed for a massacre in which 56 people were murdered in a prison in Manaus, capital of the state of Amazonas, on New Year’s Day. Dozens more were killed in reprisal attacks.

The remote stretch of the Solimões where Kelty is thought to have gone missing is the same section where police chief Thyago Garcez disappeared in December last year, after he and other police officers got into a firefight with drugs traffickers. His body has never been found.

The Foreign Office confirmed it was supporting the family of a woman who had died in Brazil and said it was in contact with the Brazilian authorities.

The family of the adventurer said they were “extremely proud” of her, in a statement released by the Foreign Office.

Kelty’s brothers Piers and Giles and her sister Natasha said their “active and determined sister” had recently challenged herself with adventures on the Pacific Coast Trail in the US, as well as in the South Pole and finally the Amazon river.

“In a world that is today a much smaller place, the explorer in our sister found herself seeking ways to prove that challenges were achievable,” the statement said. “We are extremely proud of our sister who was dearly loved by us all and her strength will be sorely missed.”

Posting on Facebook days before she disappeared, Kelty joked about a warning she had been given about the stretch of river she was about to enter. In the post written on 10 September, she said: “So in or near Coari [100km away] I will have my boat stolen and I will be killed too. Nice.”

On 12 September she said she was “in the clear” followed by a smiley-face emoji. But a few hours later she posted a message about an encounter she had had on her journey: “Turned corner and found 50 guys in motor boats with arrows!!! My face must have been a picture!! (Town was uber quiet... too quiet!!) all go ...

“OK 30 guys ... but either way ... that’s a lot of folks in one area in boats with arrow and rifles.”

The British consulate provided the navy with details about the missing Briton last Thursday. Frigate captain of the 9th naval district, Paulo Veiga, added: “A distress flare was triggered by the British traveller, but we could not locate where it had been fired from via GPS.

“Local people in the area where the sportswoman’s vessel was found said they saw a woman on the river but they couldn’t tell what direction she was going in.

“We started our search last Thursday and there is no forecast end to how long we will look for the missing woman ... We are focusing on the Solimões river.”

Olie Hunter Smart, an explorer who completed a similar route in 2015, met Kelty before her trip to help her plan for the journey.



He said: “The Emma that I met was an incredibly brave and courageous person who lived life to the full. My thoughts go out to her close friends and family at this very sad time.”



In 2010, British journalist Helen Skelton travelled more than 2,000 miles along the Amazon river in around six weeks. But she did not make the journey alone and was followed by a support boat for her safety.



Kelty was no stranger to solo adventures. She had previously skied solo to the south pole, becoming only the sixth woman to achieve the feat and had also completed a 2,600-mile hike on her own across the US, among other challenges.

In the blog she writes: “My outside adventures were the yang to my work but in so many ways it mirrored it too.

“I always saw this as my sanctuary away from a very demanding and focused career that spanned across the education system from preschool to further education, special education, learning BSL and becoming a headteacher (another life dream).”