RIO DE JANEIRO, March 13 (Reuters) - A man wanted for rape abducted his 5-year-old daughter in a light airplane and tried to smash it into a busy shopping center in a Brazilian city, missing it but killing them both, police said on Friday. "By our reading of what happened and his psychological state, we are convinced that his intention was to smash into the shopping center," said Manoel Borges, the police commander in charge of the investigation in the central city of Goiania. Police identified the man who crashed the plane on Thursday evening as Kleber Barbosa da Silva, 31, who was wanted for the suspected rape this week of a 13-year-old girl. Images on Globo television channel showed an air force plane flying beside the light aircraft before the crash and the wreckage of the plane and more than a dozen cars in the parking lot. A pink sandal, apparently belonging to the dead girl, was also shown in the wreckage. "My car would have been there underneath. I avoided being killed by a second," businessman Agner Rodrigues da Costa told Globo. Police said they had been on the trail of Da Silva after the suspected rape. On Thursday, he argued with his wife and forced her out of the family's moving car, injuring her seriously, before driving with his daughter to a small airport in the nearby city of Luziania. He convinced a pilot to take them on a sightseeing tour in the aircraft, but then produced a gun and forced him out of the plane when it was on the runway. He took the controls himself and flew the plane erratically for about an hour before crashing it, police said. (Reporting by Stuart Grudgings; Editing by Eric Beech)
Britain's Prince Charles (R) talks with Brazil's Environment Minister Carlos Minc at Rio de Janeiro's Botanic Gardens March 12, 2009. Prince Charles is in Brazil on an official visit. REUTERS/Sergio Moraes ...
