WHEN the Sao Paolo newspapers first reported that a young man from this city had died after being Tasered and capsicum-sprayed on the streets of Sydney, they had to provide explanations and diagrams of how a Taser works.

Even though violence is common in this city of 20 million, the Taser is not the weapon of choice for Sao Paolo police, who deal with some of the world’s best-organised criminals.

So there is deep frustration and anger among Roberto Luasidio Curti’s closest friends that the 21-year-old would have ended up dead, at the hands of Sydney police, apparently over a packet of biscuits.

“Tasered for biscuits? Here in Sao Paolo, a robbery is 20 guys coming into your place with submachine guns,” says one of Roberto’s best friends.

The notion that Roberto moved in moneyed circles in Sao Paolo is confirmed when News Ltd visits the home of a friend, located nearby one of Sao Paolo’s several financial districts.

The place is an ultra-modern, 6m-walled fortress, with multiple security cameras peering into the street designed to foil kidnappers and raiders.

Buzzed inside past the guards, we take our seats on snow-white sofas by an infinity pool as a maid fusses with drinks. This is Sao Paolo’s elite, and the three people sitting opposite, two stylish young men and a beautiful young woman, are deeply unhappy.

A report in News Ltd during the week claimed Roberto had been partying for two nights prior to his death at 5.30am on Sunday morning. They do not take issue with the reported claim that Roberto may have been on drugs – though they very much doubt it.

They object to the depiction of Roberto as a wild party animal. They say something else had been bothering Roberto for a week or so.

“He had felt threatened,” says the young woman. “He felt something was going on. He was a very sensitive person.”

None of them will be named or photographed. They feel enough damage has been done with comments of people who claimed to know Roberto. But they allude repeatedly to the idea he was troubled by his own thoughts.

“He said he felt something bad was going to happen to him,” says one of the friends.

They confirm that sometime before his death he had rang his sister, Ana Luisa, saying he felt threatened.

They say Roberto went out last Saturday night, after playing soccer, with a friend named Patrick and two others. It has been reported that Patrick told another friend that Roberto was acting weird, had taken drugs and, after a brief argument, had disappeared in a taxi after leaving the nightclub.

The Sao Paolo friends say they spoke to Patrick, who did not reveal much, making no mention of drugs or a fight. Patrick told them that Roberto had left the nightclub between 4am and 4.30am, saying he was taking a taxi to his home in Bondi Junction.

For reasons they cannot explain, Roberto ended up down in King St, which is the wrong direction from Bondi Junction and not much of a place to be at five in the morning.

There is confusion in the minds of the media and the public - who have been told almost nothing by police - over what happened next. It is believed Roberto entered a convenience store on King St.

According to Brazilian media, he “invaded” the shopkeeper’s restricted area, trying to talk to woman working there. He was saying, “If you don’t help me, God will not forgive you.”

He took a packet of biscuits - type unknown - and returned 20 minutes later, minus the biscuits. He stayed only a short while and left. Some reports claim it was people working at the nearby Apple store, which was not yet open, who called the police.

Next, Roberto is caught shirtless, on CCTV, being chased down Pitt St by what appears to be both plain-clothes and uniformed police. One uniformed officer can be seen firing his Taser into Roberto’s back.

The rest of the CCTV footage from the area, which could answer many questions, remains in the hands of police. It has been reported that Roberto was Tasered three to four times. It is not clear whether this was shots from different officers’ guns, or one officer sending three or four charges into Roberto from one gun.

Then he was capsicum sprayed and, from what the Sao Paolo friends have read, kicked by a policewoman.

Further confusion has been thrown into the mix with SBS reporting that the convenience store employee did not recognise Roberto as the one who had stolen the biscuits.

"The store’s worker says it was not the same person who stole the biscuits and the one who died at Pitt Street,” SBS Portuguese Radio contributor Marcos Moreira told the ABC.

Roberto’s Sao Paolo friends say no matter what Roberto’s state of mind, he did not need such a heavy-handed response. They say it is time for police to give friends and family some satisfaction on what really happened.

The young woman says she had become close friends with Roberto about six years ago. Their friendship grew to the point she would spend most days over at Roberto’s three-bedroom apartment in the mostly Jewish area of Sao Paolo known as Higienopolis.

Roberto’s father, who was in real estate, died when Roberto was five of six and his mother followed in 2001, from leukemia. After that, says the young woman, Roberto’s two sisters Anna Luisa and Maria Fernanda became like his parents.

Ana Luisa went to London, and then moved to Sydney, and Fernanda moved out of the apartment.

For several years up until he left for Sydney last year, Roberto lived alone, although his grandmother Eurydice, 83, lived in the apartment block next door. The friends says the three children had an inheritance and were comfortable, though did not overly rely on their very wealthy uncle, Sao Paolo financier Joao Eduardo Laudisio.

Mr Laudisio this week described how he had taken Roberto and his own son, Eduardo, for full health screenings at Sao Paolo’s Hospital Israelita Albert Einstein before Roberto headed for Sydney and Eduardo went to California to study English.

He dismissed any suggestion Roberto had any pre-existing health condition which could have made him less likely to tolerate the Taser shots or the capsicum spray.

“He had exams about his health, full exams, everything shows he’s normal, he has no kind of disease, in the best hospital in South America,” the uncle said. “He was very healthy.”



The friends said Roberto’s main “problems” related to being left by his parents at such a young age but, along with his sisters (the friends say he also had a brother of similar age, but they spent little time together), those friends filled the role of his family.

“It is hard to find anyone who has had so many problems yet has turned out so well,” says one of the men.

“He had a lot of close friends,” says the young woman. “We took care of him.”

Many young well-to-do Brazilian students take the opportunity to study abroad. They consider Australia expensive, but like the friendliness and the beaches.

One of this group also lived and studied in Sydney. “Roberto was drinking like any other young person on St Patrick’s Day,” this friend says. “He had a few drinks. I have done the same thing myself.

“They are trying to make him a bad person but he was just the best person. There is something wrong with this story.”

They want to know why police needed to repeatedly Taser a small man.

“He was worried, he was clearly helpless,” the young woman says. “If he took drugs, the drugs do not matter. The only thing that matters is the way he was killed. And it was brutal.”

Brazilian media are reporting the history of Taser deaths in Australia. They ask if it is true that the police never seem to get in trouble when they conduct their own investigations.

The only answer is: that seems to be how it goes.

This group is organizing the Facebook vigil for next week outside the Australian consulate in Sao Paolo next week. They’ve shifted it from Friday to Saturday in order to draw a bigger crowd – even though the consulate will be closed.

They don’t want violence. “We don’t want trouble,” the young woman says. “We don’t want to go to war with Australia. We want to celebrate a great friend.”

On Sunday, in Sao Paolo, Roberto’s beloved Palmeiras football team will dedicate its game against its great rival, Corinthians, to Roberto.



