29. Idiot Scavengers and a Radioactive Device
The scavengers, Roberto dos Santos Alves and Wagner Mota Pereira took the teletherapy device’s source assembly in a wheelbarrow back to Alves’ home, where they tried to dismantle it. The idiot duo found it extremely difficult to get the thing open. The following day, Pereira experienced diarrhea and dizziness, and his left hand began to swell. He went to a clinic, where his symptoms were diagnosed as the result of something he ate, and he was told to rest at home. In the meantime, Alves persisted with the attempts to open the device, and finally, on September 16, 1987, after three days, he managed to puncture it with a screwdriver.
Inside, he found a glowing blue substance and scooped some of it out. He thought that it might be gunpowder and tried to light it on fire, but it didn’t ignite. Two days later, he sold the device to Devair Alves Ferreira, the owner of a nearby scrapyard. Fascinated by the glowing blue substance inside the punctured teletherapy device, Ferreira figured it might be not just valuable, but outright supernatural, so he took it to his house. Things were about to take yet another turn for the worse.