A 15-year-old opened fire on students in his school in an eastern neighborhood of São Paulo on Monday morning. Three students were hit; one died instantly and there is no official information about the health of the other two. The gunman has been arrested. It is the second such school shooting to take place in São Paulo this year – and the seventh in the last two decades.
The state concentrates most of the school shootings and other severe acts of violence that have occurred in Brazil. In March, a 71-year-old teacher died and four students were injured after being stabbed by a 13-year-old at a school to the west of the city.
In the last 22 years, Brazil has recorded 26 incidents of severe violence in schools, leaving 139 victims – 46 of them fatal. A survey published in June by think tank Sou da Paz found that firearms were used in half of the cases.
The São Paulo government said in a statement that it “deeply regrets and sympathizes with the families of the victims of the attack that occurred this Monday morning at the Sapopemba State School. At this moment, the priority is to provide aid to the victims and psychological support to the students, educators, and families.”
Justice and Public Security Minister Flávio Dino said government officials will work with the São Paulo police in the investigation. The ministry has received more than 30,000 possible school shooting reports since it launched a platform called Safe School in April, and more than 400 people have been arrested on suspicion of planning attacks, according to the ministry.
The platform was launched after four children between the ages of 4 and 7 were killed at a daycare center in the southern state of Santa Catarina. It focuses mainly on monitoring social networks, considering that attackers typically announce their plans before carrying them out. In today’s case, the shooter reportedly announced his intention a week before to other students, saying that he would do it because he “didn’t like” them.
As The Brazilian Report showed in April, experts suggest that the rise in school attacks may be linked to online recruitment of young people by the far-right. Social media and online platforms are reportedly being used to co-opt young people and desensitize them to extremist ideologies.
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