Case description
On the evening of April 20, 1969, according to a newspaper account preserved in a Brazilian archival dossier, twenty-five-year-old farm worker Adelino Roque was travelling on horseback from the Itauçu area of Goiás. The later synopsis places the beginning of the encounter at about 19:30 on a rural route near a river.
Adelino reportedly noticed an intense light following him. It kept pace with horse and rider for roughly two kilometres and gradually descended. As it moved lower, the light illuminated the river water. The surviving archival description records no definite hull, windows or mechanical shape, so the luminous source should not automatically be converted into a conventional flying saucer.
The light came over Adelino's head. He later described a cold current or light affecting his eyes and a contrasting sensation of heat across his chest. He felt immobilized or hypnotized. In the story relayed by his uncle, José Marcório, Adelino was then slowly lifted from the horse before the unidentified source departed rapidly. The account does not preserve a remembered interior sequence or a description of occupants.
Adelino's next reported awareness was at about 05:00 near the Paranaíba River in Itumbiara, a journey said to require roughly a day by ordinary travel from his home area. He had no memory of the intervening hours. A cart driver or other local person reportedly helped him orient himself, and he returned by bus. What happened to the horse is not consistently established across the short summaries.
Family members said Adelino returned with glassy eyes, purplish-looking skin and a disturbed expression. They also described a marked change in his behaviour and his abandonment of ordinary work. These observations were reported by relatives; the accessible dossier does not provide a contemporaneous clinical examination capable of establishing a medical cause.
The later newspaper synopsis adds a tragic and confusing aftermath involving Adelino, a sixteen-year-old niece and deaths under circumstances it says were never clarified. Police reportedly considered exhumation. Those claims require a separate documentary and safeguarding review and are not used as visual spectacle or as proof that the reported light caused later events.
The source chain is stronger for the existence of the story than for its extraordinary explanation. A clipping from O Dia dated June 18, 1969 was retained in material that entered Brazilian government archival custody, and a parallel official-information request sought to locate Adelino for interview. The accessible Atlas record, however, relies on a preserved Portuguese synopsis rather than a newly inspected full translation of every original page.
The Atlas retains CE4 because the narrative includes involuntary displacement and missing time. It does not claim that a spacecraft, occupants or extraterrestrial cause were established. The date and locality also vary slightly across parallel catalogue records, so those differences remain visible rather than being silently harmonized.
The portrait reconstructs only the reported pursuit before the missing interval: one rider and horse beside a river under an intense descending light, with no invented craft form or beings. It omits the later deaths and does not show a literal abduction beam. It is an illustrative reconstruction, not a photograph or proof of transport.