When a 16-year-old shooter opened fire on two schools in southeastern Brazil on Friday, at least three people were murdered, including an adolescent girl, and 13 others were injured.
Police in the Espirito Santo state town of Aracruz said the shooter opened fire on a gathering of instructors at his old school Friday morning, killing two and injuring nine others.
Former Student Shoots Students, Teachers at 2 Brazil Campuses
He then left the public elementary and secondary schools and went to a nearby private school, where he murdered one adolescent girl and injured two others, according to authorities. Authorities have apprehended the gunman, according to Governor Renato Casagrande, who has announced three days of mourning in the state. He also stated that some of the survivors' lives are still in danger due to their injuries.
According to investigators, the suspect in the Brazil school shooting had a swastika on his fatigues. According to archaeologist Adriana Dias' assessment, there are presently around 530 active neo-Nazi cells throughout the nation. As reported by Daily Mail, the majority of the casualties were teachers.
Official said the gunman, a police officer's son, used two pistols in the attack, both registered to his father - one his service weapon and the other a privately registered weapon. Security camera footage revealed the attacker wearing a bulletproof vest and firing a semiautomatic handgun throughout the attacks, according to Espirito Santo public security secretary Márcio Celante, who spoke in a video given by the secretariat's press office.
The firearm belonged to the former student's father, a military police officer, according to Casagrande. In addition to the killings, 13 others were injured, including nine teachers, according to Celante, who said that the gunman got entrance to the teacher's lounge in the public school by breaching a lock.
Six people remained hospitalized Friday afternoon, including two toddlers. School shootings are unusual in Brazil, although they have become more regular in recent years, as per CBS News. Officials stated the gunman, a police officer's son, used two pistols in the attack, both registered to his father - one his duty weapon and the other a privately registered weapon.
Casagrande stated that the child appeared to have meticulously planned the attack, getting in through a closed door and avoiding the school's security officer. According to the governor, he then entered the teachers' lounge, the first room he came to, and began the fire. "He was looking for somebody to shoot, so he started a fire on the first individuals he saw," he explained.
As per Civil Police Commissioner Joao Francisco Filho, the suspect appeared to have been planning the attack for two years and did not appear to have a definite target. An AFP photographer saw investigators carrying victims' remains in coffins and loading them into police vehicles outside the school, which was sealed off with crime scene tape. The population of the city is around 100,000 people.
Shooting Incidents Are Uncommon in Brazil
School shootings are uncommon in Brazil, but they have been on the rise in recent years. When a guy opened fire on a school in Brazil in 2011, 12 children were killed. In 2019, two past students killed eight people at a high school in Suzano, outside of Sao Paulo, before killing themselves. The recent shootings were described as an "absurd catastrophe" by Brazilian President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Lula, who served as President of Brazil from 2003 to 2010, will enter office on January 1 after defeating far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in last month's elections. He has been harshly critical of Bolsonaro's substantial changes to gun-control legislation.
Since ex-army captain Bolsonaro took office as president in 2019, the number of registered gun owners in Brazil has more than fivefold, thanks to a series of presidential decrees loosening guns and ammunition laws. According to public security specialist Bruno Langeani of the research group Sou da Paz, the actions of the previous administration made such assaults more plausible, Hindustan Times reported.
Related Article: 4 Idaho University Students Dead After At Large Suspect Stabbed Them Multiple Times While Sleeping
@YouTube
