(Newser)
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Leon Panetta on Tuesday revealed a 2011 incident in which three Marines on a US Embassy security team reportedly pushed a prostitute out of a van in Brasilia. And today Reuters has the juicy details, per Romilda Aparecida Ferreira, 31, and her lawyer. They intend to sue the embassy over the Dec. 29 event, in which Ferreira says the van's back wheel ran her over. They say the vehicle stopped briefly, but ultimately left her in a nightclub parking lot with a broken collarbone and punctured lung.
Ferreira says she and her co-workers "settled on a price and whose house we would go to" after meeting the men in a strip club, but that one of the men forced her out of the car when she attempted to leave with them. She says she panicked and clung to the car, but fell and hit her head. A State Department rep confirms that the van ran over Ferreira, but says the woman had attempted to open the door while the vehicle was moving. Ferreira says she was hospitalized for 12 days, and was forced to pay $9,574 for a second surgery after the botched initial attempt to set the broken bone. She says she's still experiencing swelling, and has scars on her legs that made her self-conscious about her appearance, spurring her to quit her job as a dancer.
