SAO PAULO – Popular Brazilian cartoonist Glauco Villas Boas and his adult son were gunned down trying to avoid an assault on his residence in the Sao Paulo suburb of Osasco, the family’s attorney said Friday.

Glauco, 53, and son Raoni, 25, were shot by two unknown persons who entered the family’s home after midnight Thursday, lawyer Ricardo Handro told Folha de Sao Paulo, the newspaper in which Boas’s political cartoons have run since 1984.

To keep his family from being harmed, Glauco negotiated with the assailants and agreed to go with them to withdraw money from the bank if they would leave the place and free his wife and children, Handro said.

At the moment Glauco was leaving the house with the assailants, Raoni arrived, and when he saw that a robbery was in progress he sought to dissuade the criminals.

The two assailants then shot Raoni and Glauco, who tried to defend his son, and then ran off in a vehicle they had stolen hours before.

The attorney said Glauco died on the spot and Raoni died on the way to the hospital.

The murder of Glauco and his son was lamented by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who in an official communique called the incident “a real tragedy.”

“Glauco was a great portrayer of Brazilian society, he understood the ways and customs of our people and expressed them with intelligence and humor,” Lula said.

The cartoonist, a native of the southern state of Parana, began his career in the 1970s with the Diario da Manha newspaper in the town of Ribeirao Preto, Sao Paulo state, where in 1976 he won the top prize from the Piracicaba Hall of Humor, the chief forum for cartoons in the country.

In 1984, Glauco began to publish his drawings in Folha de Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest-circulation daily.

His book “Politica Zero” (Politics Zero), with 64 cartoons of political criticism of the Lula government, was published in 2006. EFE