September 2, 2015
RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) - A Brazilian woman really almost did shop till she dropped -- when a stray bullet lodged in her handbag at a swanky mall in Rio de Janeiro.
"I was with a friend coming out of Shopping Leblon," wrote Renata Brito Moret on her Facebook page, "when I heard a noise really close by, as if something had fallen into my bag."
That something, it turned out, was a bullet that made four holes in the leather bag she'd slung over her shoulder during the shopping expedition last Friday.
"I still don't know what happened, but if it had hit me I'd be seriously hurt," she said in her post late Monday, which featured pictures of the slug and the damaged bag.
"Be smart when you're walking in this area. What an ugly thing," she advised friends.
O Globo newspaper identified Moret as a designer and said that police had no reports of shootings in the area, suggesting that the bullet was a stray from a distant shot.
Stray bullets from gunfights between drug gangs or between gangs and police armed with military grade weapons are a regular problem in Rio.
Just this Sunday a man was hit by a bullet in his hand while he played football, while last week a 15-year-old girl died after being hit in the head by a stray bullet.
