Jean Charles de Menezes told a cousin after the July 21 bomb attempts in London that they should “pray and hope not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time”, an inquest was told yesterday.

Vivian Figueiredo said that she felt “quite scared” living in London in the aftermath of the 7/7 and 21/7 bombings in 2005 and Mr de Menezes had sought to reassure her.

It was the last conversation they had together. On July 22, Mr de Menezes was shot dead on a Tube train by police officers who mistook him for a suicide bomber.

Members of the de Menezes family were giving evidence on the third day of his inquest at Southwark Coroner’s Court, sitting in special session at the Oval cricket ground.

Alex Pereira, another cousin, said that Mr de Menezes had always found British police officers “very polite”.

He had been stopped four times by police, including once when riding a motorcycle in Park Lane, Central London, and another time at Brixton Tube station as he was on his way to work with a rucksack of tools.

Mr Pereira said: “We come from Brazil and it is very common for police to stop people there and even police carry a gun in Brazil so it does not scare us. Why would he be scared of the police?”

The two men grew up together in a rural village in southeast Brazil. Mr de Menezes, 27, was a self-taught electrician who had always dreamt of travelling to the US or England.

Mr Pereira said that Mr de Menezes travelled to São Paulo when he was 16 to work on a chicken farm. “He was a guy that liked to learn and he fought to make life better because he came from a place where everything is very difficult,” he said. “At the time it was very, very hard and since he was a little boy he studied to become an electrician.”

Mr Pereira said that Mr de Menezes travelled to London after he was refused an American visa. Once in Britain he sent money home to his family and his girlfriend, Adriana.

“He studied hard and learnt English quickly. He was prepared to do any work initially. But he was pleased when he found work as an electrician,” Mr Pereira said. “He was very ambitious and worked very hard but he still enjoyed life. He was very happy in England and I thought he would like to stay here permanently eventually.” Mr Pereira said he was shocked to learn that traces of cocaine had been found in Mr de Menezes’s bloodstream after his death.

Patricia da Silva Armani, another cousin of the dead man, said that he told her to be careful after the attempted bombings on July 21.

Ms Armani said that when Mr de Menezes was shot dead the next day she was thrown into a state of shock for several days. “When I saw his body I fainted,” Ms Armani said in a statement. “The following days were horrific.”

Ms Armani lived with Mr de Menezes and Ms Figueiredo in Tulse Hill, South London, with another cousin. Another flat in the block was linked to Hussain Osman, one of the 21/7 bombers. The court was told that police teams watching the flat were confused and that Mr de Menezes had a possible resemblance to Osman.

It was also told that a surveillance officer outside the flat failed to film Mr de Menezes because he was urinating in a bottle when the young Brazilian left the building.

The inquest continues.

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