The 14-year-old son of councillor Susana Gravato has been placed in a youth detention centre amid strong suspicions that he murdered his own mother. Neighbours and friends describe the family as “close-knit”.
Orquídea, a neighbour, kept her television on almost all of Tuesday night. On the screen, a familiar face appeared again and again, that of Susana Gravato, the Vagos councillor shot dead in her own home that afternoon. The news sent shockwaves through Gafanha da Vagueira, where the lawyer had lived since she was six years old.
Early reports reaching residents, and dominating news bulletins, suggested a violent robbery. The house had been ransacked, and a bag of money lay abandoned on the floor. But by Wednesday morning, the Judiciary Police (PJ) announced they had identified the councillor’s 14-year-old son as the main suspect, citing “strong indications of the commission of a qualified homicide”.
“Nothing could have predicted such an ending,” several neighbours and friends told journalists. Gravato, who was married and had two sons, was described as devoted to both her family and community.
Armindo, who owns a nearby bicycle shop, initially suspected a revenge attack by someone the councillor might once have represented in court. Another neighbour, who asked not to be named, said she barely slept, fearing a killer was still at large. Neither could comprehend that the perpetrator might be the boy everyone knew as “polite”, “affectionate”, “so good with his grandparents”.
“Oh, dear Lord, how could the boy have done such a thing?” asks Orquídea, who remembers Gravato as a loving mother. “She was such a kind, good person,” she says — before correcting herself: “Was.”
The elderly neighbour, in her seventies, told the Observador newspaper that she knew Susana Gravato well, she even “held her as a baby”, and knew her family too: her father, who once joked about marrying her, and her husband, who runs a local hardware shop and serves as treasurer at the Gafanha da Boa Hora Parish Council.
“I used to pop into the shop and tease him, saying, ‘Come on, you’re robbing me! You know I’m retired and have a bad back, can’t you make it a bit cheaper?’ He always knew I was joking,” she laughs faintly.
Investigators issued a statement confirming the 14-year-old boy had been identified as a suspect after they “collected several items of evidence and recovered the firearm used, which belonged to the boy’s father”.
According to the Jornal de Notícias, the teenager retrieved the revolver, which was legally registered, from his father’s safe. The boy, who had spent the morning at Vagos Secondary School, where he was in Year 9, and had lunch with his parents at a nearby restaurant, knew the safe’s access code. He also took money later found scattered on the floor by investigators.
“He had it all planned,” speculates Orquídea. “He turned everything upside down in the house, left the bag of money on the table. He knew his father kept a gun,” she says, echoing a view shared by many in the village.
Emergency services were called at 3:08 p.m., reporting a “victim in cardiac arrest”, according to José Santos, commander of the Vagos Fire Brigade. Gravato was found moments earlier by her husband, lying on the sofa, covered with a blanket and bleeding heavily, reports Correio da Manhã.
He had rushed home from his hardware shop after being alerted by a friend who had been on the phone with Susana at the time of the shooting. The friend reportedly heard her cry out before the call was abruptly cut off.
When he arrived, the husband tried to resuscitate her, confirmed firefighters, who continued attempts “until the arrival of the medical team, which declared her dead at the scene.”
Gravato moved to Gafanha da Vagueira aged six. She graduated in Law in 2001, completed her legal training in 2005, and worked for years as a lawyer.
Her friend Armindo recalls that politics was always her passion. She joined the Social Democratic Party (PSD) in 1994 and later served in its youth wing, the JSD.
In 2009, she was elected to the Vagos Municipal Assembly with the independent “Vagos Primeiro” movement, a post she held until 2013. At the time of her death, she was a councillor in the outgoing PSD-led executive, responsible for environment, justice, general administration, social cohesion and health.
In a tribute on social media, the local PSD branch praised her “example of integrity and commitment to the common good” and pledged to “honour her legacy with the same spirit of public service”.
