Boy faces more surgery as man admits needles murder attempt

THE two-year-old boy who had nearly three dozen sewing needles shoved into his body by his stepfather is expected to undergo another surgery this week, doctors said yesterday.

The news came as a jailed Brazilian man admitted in a television interview he wanted to kill the boy to spite his wife.

Doctors said they will try to remove three needles from the boy’s abdominal region tomorrow.

The boy is recovering well from a five-hour operation last Friday to remove four rusty needles that were near his heart and in his lungs.

He is expected to undergo a third surgery in the near future at the Ana Nery hospital where he is being treated in the north-eastern city of Salvador, said hospital spokeswoman Susy Moreno.

Speaking from his phone, 30-year-old bricklayer Roberto Carlos Magalhaes told how he doped the child with wine mixed in water, then stuck needles into his body while his lover held the boy down.

“I did this two or three times a week during one month,” Magalhaes said in an interview with Globo TV’s Fantastico programme from a jail in the north-eastern state of Bahia.

The boy was too drunk from the wine mixture to cry while the needles were being pushed in, but he felt pain after the alcohol wore off, Magalhaes said.

“It was truly an unbearable suffering,” he said. “It was to get back at the boy’s mother. I thought the needles would work their way through his body and kill the boy. It was a way to kill without anyone discovering.”

However, the pain led the toddler to complain to his mother, and on December 10 she took him to a hospital where X-rays revealed about 30 needles lodged throughout his body.