Teenage student kills classmate, wounds three after opening fire at a school in Brazil
The assailant was arrested in São Paulo. This is the eighth case of classroom violence in the country so far this year in what officials have called an epidemic
Brazil on Monday awoke to another fatal school shooting, the eighth so far in 2023. A 16-year-old student killed a fellow student early in the morning after shooting her in the head; the assailant also injured three other people after opening fire at Sapopemba state school, in the city of São Paulo. The attacker has been arrested and the weapon confiscated.
The attack began at 7.30 a.m., according to the Military Police, as cited by the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo. At that time, the teenager began shooting against his classmates; according to the same source, the shooter had been a victim of bullying.
State officials in São Paulo reported that three students were hit during the attack. “One student died and three others are being treated in hospital, including one who was injured while trying to flee.”
Brazil is experiencing an epidemic of school attacks, often carried out by current or former students and reminiscent of shootings in the United States. So far this year there have been eight similar events, according to a recent study by the Brazilian Public Security Forum, cited by the news agency Efe. This figure represents a third of all those that occurred in the last two decades, evidencing how this type of crime has increased in recent times.
On occasions the assailant has used a firearm, despite the fact that obtaining one in Brazil is much more complicated than in the U.S., even after laws approved during Jair Bolsonaro’s presidency to make arms sales more flexible.
Last April, Brazil was shocked when four children under the age of seven were brutally murdered at a daycare center. That event, less than a month after a fatal stabbing by a student, put the government on alert, and officials spoke of an epidemic of violence in schools. Security forces deployed to numerous schools and arrested more than 200 teenagers for issuing threats.
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