Érika de Souza asked a question of those wondering how she didn’t notice her uncle had died

A woman who ‘wheeled her dead uncle into a bank’ and tried to get him to sign for a loan has spoken out.

Brazilian woman Érika de Souza Vieira Nunes wheeled her deceased uncle into a bank and was spotted on camera holding his head up.

During the attempt to sign off on picking up money worth 17,000 reais (around £2,600) a bank clerk had said: “I don’t think he’s well. He doesn’t look well at all.”

Nunes asked her uncle ‘are you listening’ as she held a pen in his hands before telling him to ‘sign here and stop giving me a headache’.

The bank teller said they weren’t sure they were witnessing something legal, while Nunes asked her uncle whether he wanted her to take him back to hospital.

It wouldn’t have done any good, as paramedics called to attend to the man confirmed that he’d been dead for at least two hours.

She has insisted she didn’t know he was dead when she took him into the bank. (X/@realengotv/Globo)

An autopsy of the 68-year-old man revealed he’d died of ‘bronchoaspiration and heart failure’, and Nunes was arrested at the scene.

She was investigated for manslaughter and had insisted that she thought he was still alive when she brought him into the bank in a wheelchair, and had been held on suspicion of vilification of a corpse and attempted theft through fraud charges.

According to her version of events, which she revealed to Brazilian show Fantastico, she ‘can’t remember much’ about what went on in the bank.

Nunes, who is currently undergoing psychiatric treatment and has been taking medicine prescribed for insomnia, said she doesn’t ‘know if it was the effect of the medicine that day’ but she might have taken more than the prescribed dose.

She also pointed out that other people didn’t appear to notice that her uncle was dead at first, as the bank teller had said he looked unwell rather than telling her she’d wheeled in a dead man.

She took her dead uncle into the hospital. (X/@realengotv)

She said: “Neither I nor many people noticed. How do you give a paper to a dead person to sign?”

Nunes has been released from pre-trial custody as she is not deemed to be a flight risk, and so she can continue to care for her special needs daughter.

“I didn’t realize that my uncle was dead… I’m not that person they’re talking about, I’m not that monster,” she said in her defence.

She also claimed that she’d asked her uncle whether it would be better for her to place her hands behind his head to support it, and he’d said yes.

Her uncle Paulo Braga had been taken to hospital for pneumonia and discharged on 15 April, while he’d been taken into the bank by his niece the following day.

The 43-year-old woman has been defended by her son Lucas, who said his mum was innocent.

He said: “My mother raised six children, and she never needed to steal, she never needed to deceive anyone to raise her six children.

“My mother guided her six children in this life, and she guided them very well, teaching us the path of study, the path of what is correct.

“Our life is very well underway and my mother has always been our biggest inspiration.”

Her legal representative has also said that the situation did not occur as police described, and that Nunes is innocent.