Horror in Brazil: a teenager kills a child and injures two people at a school

A child was killed and two other people injured in an attack on a school in southern Brazil, the authorities announced on Tuesday. The perpetrator was a 16-year-old teenager.

“The victims of the attack were two children, an eight-year-old and a nine-year-old” who “did not survive his injuries” despite the intervention of the emergency services, explained the Rio Grande do Sul state civil police in a note. A 34-year-old teacher was also injured while “trying to intervene”. Both she and the little girl are in stable condition, according to the police.

The alleged perpetrator of the attack on a school in Estaçao has been arrested by the police, who are investigating the motive behind the crime.

The police have not revealed what weapon was used. But the town's mayor, Geverson Zimmermann, told Uirapuru radio that the victims had received “stab wounds”.

He added that the suspect was known to the teachers and had been placed under “psychological treatment”. The Minister of Education, Camilo Santana, expressed on X the solidarity of the government, which will open a psychological aid unit specialized in “extreme violence”.

The region's governor, Eduardo Leite, spoke of a “tragedy”. According to the mayor of Estaçao, security had been stepped up in schools recently, following similar incidents in other establishments.

In April 2023, four children aged between 4 and 7 were killed in a day-care center in the southern state of Santa Catarina by a man armed with an axe.

Two months later, two teenagers aged 16 and 17 were shot dead by another young man at their former school in the southern state of Parana.