Inside Jean Charles De Menezes' tragic death as Disney+ drama Suspect delves into what really happened

Disney+'s latest true drama, Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles De Menezes, is set to delve into the tragic events surrounding the untimely death of Jean Charles De Menezes.
The entire four-part series was released today, Wednesday, 30th April, on Disney+, inviting subscribers to explore the shocking events that unfolded two decades ago.
With a star-studded cast including Russell Tovey, Max Beesley, Laura Aikman and Daniel Mays, and Edison Alcaide taking on the role of De Menezes, Suspect revisits a harrowing chapter in UK history that saw an innocent 27 year old Brazilian electrician lose his life.
As the highly anticipated drama hits Disney+, here's a rundown of the real-life events that inspired the series.
A closer look at what really happened to Jean Charles De Menezes
The Build-Up
On July 7, 2005, London was rocked by four suicide bombings, three of which targeted various Underground stations and a fourth detonated on a bus in Tavistock Square, claiming the lives of 52 people.
Two weeks later, on July 21, the city faced another wave of attacks with bombs intended to explode at Shepherd's Bush, Warren Street and Oval underground stations, and on a bus in Haggerston.
However, unlike the initial attacks, these bombs failed to fully detonate, with only explosions heard around 12.30pm on the targeted underground lines and the bus.
Reports suggest that the detonator caps were triggered, but the bombs failed to explode, possibly due to the low-grade hydrogen peroxide used in their construction.
Manhunt
Tragically, the bombers managed to escape after the detonations were heard, including a fifth individual who abandoned his device earlier without setting it off.
The manhunt to apprehend the offenders commenced, with former Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair calling it the "greatest operational challenge ever faced".
The initial lead on the attackers' identities came from a gym membership card discovered in one of the bags with the unexploded bomb.
The card had an address in Scotia Road, Tulse Hill, which was in the same apartment complex where Menezes lived with two cousins.
Menezes had recently returned from Brazil, where he had been caring for his father with cancer, sending money back to cover medical expenses.
The Incident
Surveillance operations started the day following the botched bombings, with Menezes spotted exiting the flats at 9.30am to attend to a fire alarm call.
One of the surveillance officers thought he resembled a suspect captured on CCTV.
However, the image of Menezes was delayed in reaching Met Police headquarters because the officer in charge of surveillance was reportedly taking a bathroom break.
The delay resulted in Cressida Dick, who was leading the Met's task force for handling major incidents at the time, giving the order to tail Menezes. She also commanded that he be prevented from entering any London Underground stations.
Menezes was shadowed by undercover officers as he boarded a bus to Brixton Station, then hopped on another bus to Stockwell.
The officers found his movements suspicious, but the 27 year old altered his destination when he discovered Brixton Station was closed due to the attempted bombings.
As they also informed those at Met's HQ that he possibly matched the description of the suspects, "code red" tactics were approved with Dick ordering that he be "detained as soon as possible".
Menezes entered Stockwell Station around 10am, using his Oyster card to pass through the barrier and made his way to the platform. Unbeknownst to him, he was being trailed by undercover officers and newly arrived firearms officers who sprinted through the station before boarding the train, shouting "He's here!".
It is believed that Menezes, bewildered by the unfolding events, stood up and was about to approach them when he was restrained.
Two armed officers then fatally shot him 11 times, including seven shots to the head, which aligns with police guidance on dealing with terrorist bomb threats.
Aftermath
A day after the shooting, police identified Menezes, realising that he had no connection to the attempted bombings.
The tragic death of a man at the hands of the Metropolitan Police has been mired in controversy and regret, as stated by the force.
His family was reportedly offered nearly £585,000 in compensation but ultimately received only £100,000, with his remains being flown back to Brazil for burial just a week later.
His cousin, Alex Alves Pereira, expressed his belief that "I believe my cousin's death was the result of police incompetence."
He highlighted the discrepancies in police reports, including the baffling decision to let a "suspected suicide bomber" board a bus.
A pathologist initially claimed the man had "vaulted over the ticket barriers" and ran, but CCTV footage disproved this account.
Further doubts were cast when it was revealed that platform CCTV was not available, allegedly due to an un-replaced hard drive following the failed bombings.
The case was referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, but Sir Ian Blair restricted their access, stating, "the shooting that has just occurred at Stockwell is not to be referred to the IPCC and that they will be given no access to the scene at the present time."
Following an inquest, it was determined that no single individual would face prosecution for the death. The family sought justice through the European Court of Human Rights in 2015, but their efforts were once again met with disappointment.
Disney+'s Suspect marks the first drama to delve deep into the heart-wrenching events, with Menezes' family on board as consultants for the series.
His mother, Maria De Menezes, confided in the BBC, saying she felt "reassured that the truth was being told".

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Daily Mirror

2 hours ago

• Daily Mirror

I killed an innocent man over mistaken identity - I'd do anything to change it

The firearms officer, codenamed C2, killed the innocent Brazilian with six bullets after his colleague initially opened fire, after the pair had followed the 27-year-old electrician into Stockwell tube station wrongly believing he was a would-be suicide bomber One of the two marksmen who shot Jean Charles de Menezes has spoken about the tragedy for the first time – 20 years after one of Britain's worst police blunders. In an emotional admission he accepted responsibility for the innocent Brazilian's death and apologised. ‌ He said: 'I would say to Jean Charles' family that I am sorry, that I and another officer were put in a position where we killed your son. I would do anything to roll back time, to have a different set of circumstances where that didn't happen.' ‌ Jean Charles, 27, died after he was pinned down and shot in the head by two officers who mistook him for a suicide bomber in a tube train at Stockwell station, South London, on July 22, 2005. The incident followed heightened tensions a fortnight after 7/7 when 52 people were killed, and a day after would-be suicide bombers tried to detonate more devices on London's transport network. Speaking in a four-part Netflix documentary released next week, the policeman, codenamed C2, remembered: 'By the time I'd got home I was aware there was speculation regarding the identity of the person I had killed. I didn't get any sleep, and I still had massive tinnitus, a very, very loud ringing in my ears. 'The next day I caught the tube back to work and I was called into the chief superintendent's office. He told me that the man I shot was completely innocent. I can't describe how I felt, the worst feeling ever, I killed an innocent man and I now know who that man is.' C2 killed the electrician with six bullets after his colleague initially opened fire. He said: 'I am responsible, and I accept responsibility. As a firearms officer ultimately the decision to use force is yours. But why were we in that position? Those people in command put me in that position, they also have to answer.' ‌ His apology is of little comfort to the de Menezes family. Among those are Jean Charles' cousins, Patricia Da Silva Armani and Vivian Figueiredo, who he was sharing a flat with at the time. Speaking to us, Patricia, 51, remembers the last time she saw her younger cousin alive, two days before he died. READ MORE: 'There are three of us in our marriage - me, Gem and the 7/7 bomber' ‌ She said: 'I'd just got back from work and he was getting ready to go out. We had coffee together, and he told me about a new job he was going to start on the Friday, putting in electrical installations in a building. He'd been washing dishes in a restaurant until then. 'He was really excited about it, the happiest I'd ever seen him. It was well paid and he felt his life was finally on the way up. 'He said goodbye and went to leave but for some reason when he got to the door he turned round and came and gave me a big hug and a kiss. ‌ 'We were close but that took me by surprise. I said to him, 'Oh, how delicious!' Now off you go to work' and he went. The next time I saw Jean was at the morgue.' Jean was on his way to the new job on the Friday morning when police started following him, believing he was one of the four men who had failed to detonate bombs on the capital's transport system the day before. One of the terrorists, Hussein Osman, lived in the same building as the three cousins. Patricia and Vivian heard about the shooting on the news, and later that the suspect had been an innocent Brazilian, but they never imagined it was Jean. ‌ Vivian, 42, woke up the following morning, still unaware. 'Everything was so silent at the house. I knocked on Jean's bedroom door, no answer,' she said. 'So I slowly opened the door. The bed was made, everything was neat and tidy. I just thought, 'Jean probably didn't come home last night'.' ‌ But then there was a knock at the door from two of Jean's friends who police had visited in the early hours. 'They told them he was suspected of terrorism and had been arrested,' she recalled. 'I was shocked. But I also had hope. It was just a matter of going to the police to clarify everything.' Vivian and Patricia were taken to the police station, where two other cousins, Alex Alves Pereira and Alessandro Pereira, were already waiting. ‌ Patricia remembered: 'Alex was really agitated. He kept saying, 'They f***ed up, they f***ed up'. He'd already joined the dots, I thought he had been arrested. They took us to a room and sat us down around a table. 'My English wasn't great and I didn't understand a lot of what they were saying. I only understood the last part – 'He is dead'. Still, I didn't think I'd heard right. 'I turned round to one of the others and he took my hand. His hand was freezing. He told me Jean was the Brazilian who had been shot dead. I went into total despair. Everyone was crying and screaming.' ‌ They were then taken to the morgue to identify Jean Charles' body. Patricia recalled: 'He was already arranged and dressed up. That's when I became ill and fainted. The next thing I remember is me sitting on a sofa with a policewoman trying to calm me down. 'I later heard that Alex and Vivian barged into the room and grabbed Jean's body. So it was very tense.' ‌ The family pursued fruitless legal action and no officers were charged, although the Met was found guilty of health and safety failures. Patricia added: 'For months I lived in shock. I wasn't able to hear a police siren without shaking. I'd get scared whenever I see policemen on the street. Even today when I'm on the tube, I'm constantly thinking about how I should escape if anything happens. 'For the first years, I thought about Jean every day and I would cry every day. This year has brought back a lot of the trauma and painful memories.' ‌ Vivian, now married with a daughter, Luna, says: 'I was just 22 and had been in the UK three months when Jean died. I was just a countryside girl and he was my safety, so when I lost him my ground went from under me. My whole world fell apart. 'I didn't really have time to grieve because we had to deal with all the bureaucracy, the polemic and the injustice. I don't know how I survived.' She says she now wants to remember the way Jean lived his life, not the way he died. ‌ 'He was such a happy person, an extrovert who would laugh and joke and got on with everyone. He was a dreamer. He wanted to make the best use of his life but above all he wanted to help people and make his family proud. 'I remember him all the time but especially at times when I wished he were still here, like when my daughter was born. He still appears in my dreams, the Jean we loved and knew so well. He'll never be forgotten.'

BBC News

2 hours ago

• BBC News

Muriel McKay's family welcome 'strong' leads in search for body

The family of a woman murdered 56 years ago said a £1m reward for information had led to two "incredibly strong" leads in the search for her McKay, 55, was kidnapped in 1969, held to ransom and then killed at a farm in Hertfordshire, having been mistaken for the then-wife of Rupert grandson Mark Dyer said they had received information suggesting her body could have been buried behind a shop in Bethnal Green Road, London and at a house in Buntingford, said they were meeting genuine people "with really tangible leads" and links to the brothers convicted of her kidnap and murder. Arthur Hosein died in prison, while Nizamodeen Hosein later spoke to the McKay family, explaining where he had buried Metropolitan Police interviewed Hosein in 2024 and, despite scepticism about his account, carried out a third dig at Stocking Farm, near Bishop's Stortford but no human remains were found. In one of the leads, a woman has come forward to say her father told her before he died that he employed Arthur Hosein at the tailor's shop he ran on Bethnal Green described how a body had been stored at the property for 24 father also employed a former Polish World War Two soldier "who was apparently heavily involved in disposing of the body" behind the shop. Mr Dyer said he had informed his contact at the Metropolitan Police, who told him she would put someone on the lawyers have written to the shop owners and the tenants and they were ready with a scanning team. Mr Dyer has also spoken to a woman in a care home in said her family used to live next door to a man in Buntingford who used to supply things to the Hoseins at Stocking she was 17 years old, she was woken at 01:00 by a thumping sound and saw him through her window digging with a storm father said he reported it to the police but they dug in the wrong place."She is happy to come from her care home with her daughter and show the scanning team exactly where to scan," said Mr Dyer."If you look at this as a game, we are definitely getting round the board and we are throwing high-number dice now."Incredible, fantastic news". Follow Beds, Herts and Bucks news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.

Times

6 hours ago

• Times

Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter: from Disney to festival headliners

Eight days apart, at the British Summer Time stage in Hyde Park, in front of a crowd of 65,000, two glittering, platinum pop titans will perform. First up, next Friday, is Olivia Rodrigo: 22 years old, 46 million monthly listeners on Spotify; 14 Grammy nominations; three wins; and about to headline Glastonbury. Then, on July 5 and 6, Sabrina Carpenter: 26 years old, 70 million monthly listeners on Spotify; six Grammy nominations; two wins; her song Espresso the biggest single of 2024 by a female artist. The pair have often been depicted as bitter rivals: two Disney Channel alumni whose overlapping journeys to superstardom were powered partly by lyrics that may, or may not, have been written about the same ex-boyfriend. But really, they are both lessons in how to pull off the Disney breakaway — what happens when young women wriggle out of their contracts and embrace their new freedom by singing about the brutality and reality of modern girlhood, its shattering heartbreaks and the fun of the rebound. One of the things that marks both of them out is the obsessiveness with which their fans pore over their songs and image-making, whether it's Rodrigo last week being accused on social media of ordering a Nashville music venue to take down Taylor Swift imagery before she filmed there — it was actually removed by the venue for legal reasons — or Carpenter sending the internet into meltdown with the suggestive cover art for her new album, Man's Best Friend. Rodrigo grew up in Temacula, California, a theatre kid in a family who did other things — her mother a teacher, her father a therapist. After various singing competitions and school productions, she was made the lead in the American Girl doll franchise movie at 12 years old and, the following year, cast in Disney's Bizaardvark and then High School Musical: The Musical: The Series, a mockumentary. Rodrigo was homeschooled, studying for her exams on set. 'Like, 'Oh shit, I worked my whole childhood and I'm never going to get it back,'' she told The Guardian in 2023. 'I didn't go to football games, I didn't have this group of girlfriends that I hung out with after school. That's kind of sad.' After a song she wrote for the High School Musical show went viral, Rodrigo sought a record deal, choosing not to make music for Disney's in-house label. She went with Interscope/Geffen. Disney allowed her to break her contract before the show's fourth series and, during the pandemic, Rodrigo sat down to write. In 2021 her song Drivers License went stratospheric, breaking a Spotify record as the first song to hit 80 million streams in seven days. The track reached No 1 in 48 countries on Apple Music, 31 countries on Spotify and 14 countries on YouTube. 'It's been the absolute craziest week of my life,' she said in an interview. 'My entire life just, like, shifted in an instant.' Four months later she released her debut album, Sour, a pop-punk triumph about her teenage heartbreak, the songs searing and seething with anger, underwritten by longing and ache — all written by a 17-year-old, with her producer, Dan Nigro. Though she stretched her legs in the ballads, it was her stroppy, plucky rock which was particularly satisfying. Critics, with some arch surprise that it had come from a squeaky-clean Disney-kid, gave the album rave reviews. At Glastonbury 2022 she brought on Lily Allen to sing Allen's 2009 banger F*** You, dedicating it to the Supreme Court justices who had just overturned the Roe v Wade abortion ruling in the United States. 'I'm devastated and terrified, and so many women and so many girls are going to die because of this,' Rodrigo said on stage, having spent hours memorising her speech. As well as being a great song with crushing lyrics, it created a perfect storm of gossip and intrigue. 'And you're probably with that blonde girl,' she sang, 'who always made me doubt — she's so much older than me.' Fans were convinced she was singing about her former Disney co-star Joshua Bassett, with whom they thought she had a romantic relationship. The 'blonde girl', they suspected, was Sabrina Carpenter, who was rumoured to have dated Bassett the next summer. 'I put it out not knowing that it would get that reaction, so it was really strange [when] it did,' Rodrigo told Variety. 'I just remember [everyone being] so weird and speculative about stuff they had no idea about.' She also said she and Carpenter had only met 'once or twice in passing'. 'So I don't think I could write a song that was meaningful or emotional about somebody that I don't know.' In January 2021, two weeks after Drivers License blew up, Carpenter released Skin. 'Maybe 'blonde' was the only rhyme,' went the lyrics. 'You been telling your side, so I'll be telling mine.' She, like Rodrigo, was not drawn on specifics. 'The song isn't calling out one single person,' she wrote on Instagram. 'Some lines address a specific situation, while other lines address plenty of other experiences I've had this past year.' The internet whirled, creating soap opera plots around them. They both later said they received a barrage of death threats. Bassett told People magazine that he received so much hate that he was taken to hospital, diagnosed with septic shock. 'I have a right to stand up for myself,' he told GQ. 'People don't know anything they're talking about.' For his part Bassett, 24, has just been on a European tour, playing venues in Glasgow, Birmingham and London that are about 20 times smaller than his apparent exes' Hyde Park performances. Carpenter, meanwhile, has hit mega fame. Her sixth album, Short n' Sweet — she is 5ft tall — debuted at No 1 in America. Her single Espresso went platinum in more than a dozen countries and won a Grammy for best pop solo performance. The Disney empire first claimed Carpenter, who grew up East Greenville, Pennsylvania, at 12 years old, signing her into a five-record deal, after which she starred in its show Girl Meets World. After family-friendly pop, Carpenter broke away from the label after just four albums ('I definitely didn't fulfil my contract, thank god,' she told Vogue) and signed with Island Records at 22. Her fifth album, Emails I Can't Send, took a turn towards something more grown-up — and cheeky. 'Woke up this morning, thought I'd write a pop hit,' she trills. Her image shifted again for Short n' Sweet, taking on a hyper-femme, soft-edged, Betty Boop look, her blonde hair big and bouncing. As Time magazine put it: 'She's short, she's funny, and she's horny.' But as she became more of a sex bomb, she got more sardonic. 'You'll just have to taste me when he's kissing you,' she sings in Taste. Her video for Please Please Please featured her then-boyfriend, the actor Barry Keoghan, shortly after his viral scene in Saltburn, in which he is so lustful for his friend he drinks his bathwater. During her performance at Coachella, she swapped her lyrics around with a wink. 'He's drinking my bathwater like it's red wine,' she sang. After their break-up, the internet is again spinning with speculation that her new song, Manchild, relates to him. 'This song became to me something I can look back on that will score the mental montage to the very confusing and fun young adult years of life,' she wrote on social media. It includes the couplet: 'Never heard of self-care/ Half your brain just ain't there.' Carpenter's amped-up naughtiness, however, now runs the risk of tipping into alienation. Her recent album cover, which shows her on her knees in front of a man's legs, while a hand pulls her hair, drew enormous criticism including from Glasgow Women's Aid. Her caricature of the sexualised, submissive woman suddenly looked exactly like the thing it was supposed to be riffing off. At Hyde Park, Rodrigo and Carpenter will hit the same stage on successive weekends after sold-out arena tours, their fans trailing in stomper boots and eyeliner (Rodrigo) or sequins and pale-pink babydoll dresses (Carpenter). It is a very modern coming-of-age story, two young women whose specificity of lyrics and canny presentation of their personal lives have whipped up a frenzy of speculation; whose rage and cheek and charm has been released on the world; who dazzle and glitter — and kick 'em where it hurts.