My friend was a very courageous man and the Minister of Justice of Colombia.

Just three days before my flight from Rio to Bogota I was soaking sun and fresh air while strolling down Copacabana during my visit’s last Sunday. I sat on a bench, one of many along the seafront promenade.

Reacting to Brazilian friendliness I reacted with obliging inquisitiveness towards a Brazilian teenager that came towards me from my left. And then it happened. Behind me two of his friends grabbed my wallet from my short’s back pocket. Doggone!

Choices? Yes, I had them and I went for one of them.

I ran like a bullet to grab my wallet back and after some struggle got it. Petty crime it was, but it could have been quite different. I wonder if I would have dared to the same in today's Brazil. Little did I know then and there what would happen to my friend only the day after.

It was some years since we had seen each other. Meanwhile, he had worked his way to become Minister of Justice of Colombia.

My friend, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, had recently been facing crime big time. Not bad for his short career.

That he did didn’t surprise me too much, but what happened to him that Monday was brutally shocking.

I was picked up by a common friend at the airport in Bogota and given all the horrid details, beyond that which I had been able to read on the plane. A nation in mourning.

The flight that separated me from the world famous drug capo of all times and the richest man on earth back then, Pablo Escobar, (according to Fortune’s ranking), was "removed". But the seven bullets and the dead body of my friend remained. These two measures of distance remain glued to my memory. Still today.

Rodrigo Lara Bonilla was a good man. We had, all three, spent many long nights in Florida playing cards, drinking beer and setting the world straight. It wasn’t his seniority that impressed me - he was older than us. It was his eloquent oratory, his passion, his straightforwardness and concern for people that impressed me. He was a dreamer and he did something no one had dared to do before then: he challenged the infamous and powerful drug mafia, the Cartel de Medellin, head-on.

That Monday morning, he walked out the door of his home in northern Bogota, walked to his car and then it just happened. Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. Seven bullets. Blood all over. Shattered glass around the car. His kids watched it all.

Whose trigger was it really? Did he design his fate?

Maybe for some he did. But to me his courage was greater than his destiny.

It reminds of the captain in Shakespeare’s Macbeth:

“And fortune, on his damned quarrel smiling,

Show’d like a rebel’s whore. But all’s too weak;

For brave Macbeth (well he deserves that name)

Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel,

Which smoked with bloody execution.”

Pablo Escobar is gone too. My friend’s own death sealed the rich criminal's fate too.

How could Pablo Escobar get away with crime for so long and manage to become a billionaire, I ask? It sure wasn't done overnight. That man should have been put out of circulation years before.

Oh, yes! I did well in recovering my wallet back... but, above all, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla deserved to be among us today.

Can one remain silent?