A shooter takes aim at a line of unsuspecting cars filing along the main road into Rio de Janeiro in a scene that should terrify every athlete and visitor to the Olympics this summer.
The road is the Red Line, Rio's main highway and the only route into Brazil's Olympic city along which will every sports fan, athletics delegation and foreign dignitary will travel to get to the mega-event.
The 13-mile express way runs from Rio's international airport into the city, and is in the most part lined with sprawling favela shanty towns which are dangerous no-go zones controlled by heavily-armed drugs gangs.
An image has emerged of a shooter aiming a semi-automatic rifle at passing cars on the only route that will take athletes and sports fans from Rio's international airport to the Olympic Village when the Games begin in August
A previous shoot out on the Red Line express way in Rio showed people cowering next to the cars in a bid to avoid the bullets
With just seven weeks to go before the Olympic party kicks off, the image - posted by bragging bandits on social media yesterday - shows that, despite promises to clean up the city's crime-ridden slums, gangsters appear to be still firmly in control.
Experts expressed amazement at how the gangs could get hold of what appears to be an AR-15 gun, complete with a state-of-the-art holographic sight, which even the Brazilian army don't possess.
Most alarmingly, though, with the favelas out of bounds, even for the police, the shooter and his powerful weapon may still be there when VIPs and sports stars start arriving for the Games.
In recent months, a sharp rise in violence in Rio's favelas, fuelled by Brazil's economic and political crisis, has increasingly spilled out onto the city's main access road, which passes just metres from the slums on its way to the famous beaches and hotels.
Several terrifying incidents along the Red Line in recent months are causing panic even among Rio residents used to high levels of violent crime in the city.
They include car jackings and even hostage takings, while almost daily shootouts between rival gangs, or ferocious battles with the police, have left road signs and barriers pockmarked with bullet holes - and motorists fearing for their lives.
A man lies on the ground during a shooting by gang members on the road, which will take athletes and sports fans from the international airport in Rio to the Olympic Village and the city's famous hotels and beaches
Last month, a 17-year-old girl died after being hit in the head by a stray bullet as she sat in the back seat of a car being driven along the freeway to the international airport to meet her mother, who was arriving in the city on Brazil's Mother's Day.
And earlier this month, 27-year-old psychologist Anna Paula Cotta was also shot in the head by gangsters robbing motorists on a slip road to the Yellow Line, another expressway which takes drivers from the Red Line to the Barra da Tijuca district, site of Rio's Athletes Village and Olympic Park.
The woman, a successful target shooter, was operated on and is now in a stable condition in hospital.
In April, Brazilian congressman Aureo Lidio Ribeiro and a friend were kidnapped at gunpoint, tied up, then dumped on the Red Line by gangsters who stole the Jeep he had been driving.
And last month, a gang was caught who would kidnap motorists driving along the Red Line and hold them captive in a house inside the nearby favela, while the criminals would use the victims bank cards to withdraw money and make purchases, before eventually setting them free.
Meanwhile, MailOnline has spoken to a slum dweller who claims he recently saved a foreign tourist from being executed by gangsters after he took a wrong turn in his hire car while returning along the Red Line to the Tom Jobin international airport and entered the favela by mistake.
Others are not so lucky. In October last year, when pensioner Francisco Murmura, 69, was sent into another favela while following his mobile phone navigation app Waze, traffickers sprayed his car with bullets, killing his 70-year-old wife Regina.
In recent months, a sharp rise in violence in Rio's favelas, fuelled by Brazil's economic and political crisis, has increasingly spilled out onto the city's main access road. Pictured are a group trying to take cover from a hail of bullets
Evidence of frequent gun battles are everywhere, with many houses overlooking the road, as well as concrete divides and plastic barriers erected between the road and surrounding slums, perforated with bullet holes.
Adenise Moraes da Silva, 51, whose son Caio, 20, was killed by a stray bullet fired by policemen in the Alemao favela in May last year, also had a warning for visitors to the Games. Adenise claims that, in the last two months, she has lost five friends to the violence - two killed by drug dealers, two by police, and one victim of a stray bullet. And she, too, tells Olympic visitors: 'If I were choosing whether to come to Rio, I wouldn't come at this moment. It's too dangerous.
'The state of Rio de Janeiro is bankrupt, there's no money, no jobs, people are becoming desperate and many are turning back to crime.
'It's not just in the favelas, the violence is everywhere. Once you could come to Rio and avoid it, but that's not the case anymore.'
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