Pupil from London school shot dead ‘looking for drugs’ in Rio

A top London private school is at the centre of a murder investigation after one of its pupils was ‘executed’ during an official college visit to the carnival city of Rio de Janeiro.

Sergey Petrovich Danshin, 17, was shot three times in the back of the head after leaving a beachside villa which he was sharing with the school’s headmaster Philip Hurd, 52, and the teacher’s gay Brazilian lover.

Police said that four students and another teacher from the exclusive £22,000 a year International Community School in Regents Park, Central London, were all staying in the accommodation when Sergey left late at night to go in search of drugs.

The Russian’s body was recovered the next day not far from the villa and less than 48 hours after the school party arrived in Brazil. But the gruesome murder has baffled local detectives who revealed that Sergey’s backpack, containing an iPhone 5 and a credit card, had been left untouched.

Police, who have described the murder as an ‘execution’, believe Sergey had gone out to buy cannabis. Last night friends and pupils of the international school, which attracts many of the sons and daughters of London-based diplomats, expressed shock and sorrow at the news of the death.

Sergey’s wealthy father, Petr Danshin, an agribusiness magnate in the Black Sea city of Krasnodar, flew out to Rio last week to try to find out what happened to his son.

The school now faces questions about the level of supervision and care taken to protect the pupils in a dangerous suburb of the South American city. The three other pupils, two Iranians and another Russian, and the second teacher have returned to the UK while Mr Hurd remains in Brazil.

It is not the first time Mr Hurd, from London, had taken his students to Brazil. Police said he has known his Brazilian partner for three years and previously visited Rio three times and the Amazon twice.

In Rio, he shares a villa with Brazilian Carlos Eduardo Lopes da Silva, 41, who is Mr Hurd’s lover, police said. But officers said none of the four pupils were homosexual and said that they had ruled out a sexual motive for the murder, which happened in the early hours of Saturday, September 28.

The pastel peach villa is in the town of Maricá, which although it boasts stunning beaches and scenery, is a distant suburb of Rio far off the tourist trail. Locals say the area has become more dangerous after Rio’s drug gangs were expelled from many of the city’s favelas, forcing them into new areas.

Local police chief Júlio César Mulatinho Neto told the Mail on Sunday: ‘On Thursday they arrived from England. On Friday night at about 6pm, all seven walked from the house in Maricá to a nearby bar for pizza. At 11.30pm, the three adults returned to the house. All the students remained in the bar.’

He added: ‘Later, at about 1am, all four students returned to the house and went to bed. But soon afterwards, the two Russian students decided to leave the house in an attempt to buy cannabis.

‘They returned to the bar but were not successful in finding the drugs and returned to the house. Later, Sergey left the villa alone after arranging his bedding to make it look like he was still there.

‘We know that he went back to the restaurant and spoke to people there and then he walked off.’

His body was found on the bank of a local canal by two local men the next day with three bullets in the back of the head. Police believe he was killed elsewhere, possibly in a car, and his body dumped.

‘He had only been in Brazil for two days,’ Mr Neto said. ‘He can hardly have made many enemies in that time. We do not understand the motive for this crime. Was it an assassination? Was it drugs?’

Asked if he thought forces outside of Brazil could be to blame, Mr Neto said: ‘It is possible but not probable. We do not know anything about the life of Sergey back in Russia.

Police, who do not yet have a suspect, say they believe only Sergey had contact with his killer.

Earlier in the evening, Mr Hurd had watched on as his underage students downed vodka shots and smoked cigarettes, according to Renan Magalhães Garcia Gutierrez, 21, the owner of the Netuno bar.

Mr Gutierrez added: ‘When [Sergey] came back to the bar alone he was asking where he could find cannabis and also made a sniffing gesture that I understood to mean he was looking for cocaine.

‘I told him: “Be careful, it is dangerous here.”

‘He laughed and said: “Don’t be silly, Brazil has no law.”

‘He then walked off over the bridge [away from the beach] and I did not see him again.’

The week-long field trip was for students studying Business and Management. According to the school’s website: ‘Part of their task [will be] to prepare suitable marketing material such as brochures and a website for selling a holiday rental property just outside Rio where we will be staying.”

When The Mail on Sunday visited the house last week, it was deserted. It backs onto a mile-long white – if dilapidated and desolate – beach, but a seven-foot grey, spiked wall surrounds it on all sides.

Cambridge-educated Mr Hurd, who is believed to have visited the villa about a month earlier to stay with his lover and prepare for the trip, was stopped by security officials while trying to leave Brazil with the three other pupils last weekend and brought back to give evidence to police.

Sergey’s father Petr, 56, was said last night to be ‘devastated’ by his son’s murder. ‘A decade or so ago he lost Sergey’s mother and his other son in a car crash, so this is a bitter blow,’ a friend said.

Despite his youth Sergey had travelled the world, enjoyed hang gliding and jet skiing, and owned a BMW with a personalised 007 number plate. In his last message on a social networking site, he posted a video of hang gliding and said: ‘On Friday I will be in Rio, and that’s what I’m going to do first thing.’

The teenager was the heir to his father’s Amethyst business empire based in the crime-ridden region of Krasnodar, which includes the Black Sea resort of Sochi, host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

The Putin loyalist’s business interests include agriculture, petrol, shopping centres, private security and entertainment complexes.

On the school’s website, Mr Hurd boasts about becoming the youngest headteacher in the UK after his appointment at ICS in 1993. Fees for the final years of the International Baccalaureat, an alternative to A Levels, at the school are £21,250 a year plus an application fee, enrolment fee, and deposit that come to £1,650.

A spokesman for the International Community School said: “We’re appalled by this tragedy, and have done everything we can to help the Brazilian authorities with their investigations. Of the 400 students who have benefited from such trips in the past, all have ended safely. We have offered our heartfelt condolences to the family and we are now keen to respect their privacy at this difficult time.”

(Photos © Dado Galdieri/Hilaea Pictures)

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