The family of Lourenço Furtado, one of the young people involved in the beating scenes at dawn on Sunday, considers that the main defect of the 18 year old “is having a huge heart and, because he is physically big, he always had this tendency to come to the aid of friends”.
And it will have been what happened that night. “He could have been a coward, like others who stood with their arms crossed watching, or even filming, and now he wouldn’t be quoted as the bad guy,” says Sofia Furtado, her mother, to JM.
She says that there was a young man, 17 years old, being beaten by a group of five men, in there 30s, and that Lourenço, when leaving the disco, got involved in order to help him. “Maybe he should have been a coward and just watch,” she adds, recalling that her son’s meddling “may have saved the young man”.
“Suddenly, a brawl of drunks made Lourenço the only culprit”, laments Sofia Furtado, noting that it will not be so and that her son just reacted and was not the catalyst for everything that followed and that very important will be to know that “the boy who was attacked was not unconscious, but ‘shaken’ due to the punch he had taken”. So much so that “soon after he got up and went to beat Lourenço. The boy who was most injured was Tiago, the friend he helped ”. Despite everything, “fortunately no one was seriously injured”, she says.
And although making everyone responsible for the scenes unworthy, she considers that the big problem is fundamental. “Those night spaces should have other closing hours, not allowing young people to be around until so late.” Sofia Furtado stresses that “we are here to assume the consequences and for us the essential thing is that all this does not affect the future of Lourenço”.