At least two teachers and one student died and eleven other people were injured in an attack carried out this Friday by a young armed man who opened fire in two schools in the Brazilian municipality of Aracruz and is now on the run.
The attacks occurred specifically against the Primo Bitti State Primary and Secondary School (EEEFM) and the private school of Praia de Coqueiral. First, the assailant invaded the state school with a gun and shot several times in the staff room. Two of them were killed instantly and at least nine others were injured.
The attacker then left the scene in a car and headed for the Praia de Coqueiral private school, where he killed an elementary school student and wounded two other people, according to Colonel Márcio Celante, secretary of Public Security and Social Defense. of the state of Espírito Santo, in the southeast of Brazil.
The individual was dressed in camouflage and with his face covered to make it difficult for him to be identified by the cameras in the centers, according to Celante, before announcing a regional search and capture operation against the attacker.
The president-elect of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva , lamented this Friday the double attack in Aracruz. He said that he received the news “with sadness” and expressed his “solidarity with the relatives of the victims of this absurd tragedy” , which has not yet been commented on by the current president, Jair Bolsonaro, who will leave power on January 1.
The two attacks on the two schools, in the same neighborhood of the city of Aracruz, occurred this Friday during school hours.
According to Celante, the person responsible for the crime is a teenager who broke the lock on the door of the first school and, during a break between classes, went to the teachers’ room, where he opened fire with a semi-automatic pistol against the teachers. In the second school, he shot at three students, causing one death and two injuries, who, like the rest, have been taken to nearby hospitals.
The governor of Espíritu Santo, Renato Casagrande, confirmed the events and said that the possible motivation of the young man, who is suspected to be a student of one of those schools, both for primary and secondary education, is still unknown .
Incidents of armed violence in schools in Brazil have increased in recent years. On March 13, 2019, two former students shot dead eight people, most of them students and employees, at a secondary school near São Paulo, and then committed suicide. And on April 7, 2011, a 24-year-old former student opened fire at a Rio de Janeiro school, killing 12 people and wounding several others, before committing suicide.
(With information from EFE, AFP and EuropaPress)