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| - Misleading: Video of machete-wielding man hit by car was taken in Brazil, not China
A video that surfaced on social media platform X in late July has gained some attention lately with a claim that it depicts a violent traffic dispute in China. The 28-second clip shows a man emerging from a black car wielding a machete, only to be repeatedly struck by a silver vehicle.
A shorter version of the same video, making a similar claim, was also posted on X on Aug. 22. Together, they have gained more than 600 likes.
These claims were made after a series of high-profile stabbing incidents in China made headlines globally this summer.
In June, four U.S. university instructors were injured in a knife attack in the northern province of Jilin. In the same month, a Chinese school bus attendant died after defending a Japanese mother and her child from a knife attack in Suzhou, a city in eastern China.
However, the video does not show an incident in China. It was taken in Brazil two years ago.
Origin of the video
A reverse image search with keyframes taken from the video, Annie Lab found that a longer clip of the incident appeared in a Portuguese-language news report published by the Brazilian newspaper Jornal Hora Aghá on Oct. 11, 2022.
When translated to English, the headline read, “Man is run over during traffic dispute; watch the video. ” According to the article, the altercation between two drivers occurred in Macapá, a city in Brazil’s Amapá state, at approximately 8 a.m. that day.
The same 33-second video was also published by local online media SelesNafes.com on the same day.
The video in the misleading X posts appears to be the cropped version of this video.
G1 news portal, part of Brazil’s media company Globo, published a more detailed article about the incident. It also included a three-minute video taken from different angles.
According to G1’s report, the man carrying a machete was an off-duty military police officer. He was taken to hospital after the car hit him three times, breaking his leg.
The suspect fled the scene but was later arrested, news reports said.
Dora de Almeida, the Portuguese programme director and assistant lecturer at the University of Hong Kong’s School of Modern Languages and Cultures, helped us understand the Brazilian news reports.
Geolocating the street
According to both G1 and SelesNafes.com, the incident happened in downtown Macapá, near the intersection of Rua General Rondon and Avenida Fab.
Google Street View imagery of the area corresponds with landmarks seen in the video.
We also looked at the license plate design in the video, which matches the design used in Brazil.
For example, the license plates captured at the 0:07 and 0:30 marks of the video correspond with the Brazilian license plates on the License Plates of the World website.
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