Right-wing extremist in camouflage suit storms schools in Brazil – 3 dead, 11 injured Writer Hans Magnus Enzensberger deceased

Gun attacks at two schools in Brazil on Friday killed at least three people and injured 11 others. The alleged 16-year-old perpetrator was a student at one of the schools until June.

That is what the governor of the southeastern state of Espírito Santo, Renato Casagrande, told journalists. The boy was arrested. Initially, authorities assumed there were multiple attackers.

Aracruz city officials said the gunman opened fire on a group of teachers at his former school, killing two others and wounding nine others. He then drove to a nearby private school, where he killed a girl and injured two other people.

“We have information that he was under psychiatric treatment,” Casagrande said. Some of the injured are still in critical condition, he added.

Swastika on camouflage suit

Brazilian media showed security camera footage of the gunman, dressed in a camouflage suit, running towards the school, gun in hand. As he ran through the corridors, he fired the first shots.

According to investigators, the shooter wore a swastika on his camouflage suit. Officials said the boy was the son of a police officer whose two pistols he used in the attack: the service gun and a privately registered gun.

Police Chief João Francisco Filho told journalists that the 16-year-old had apparently been planning the attack for two years and appeared to have had no “clear target”.

Lula: «absurd tragedy»

Brazil’s president-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Lula described the attack on Twitter as an “absurd tragedy”. He offered his condolences to the victims’ families and said he would assist the governor in an investigation.

Lula will take office on December 1. During the election campaign, he denounced the extreme increase in the number of gun licenses during the tenure of outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro. Under Bolsonaro, the number of gun collectors, sport shooters and hunters rose from 117,000 in 2019 to more than 673,000. With his decrees, the ex-serviceman had greatly facilitated access to firearms.

Despite widespread violence in Brazil, gun attacks on schools in the South American country are relatively rare. In April 2011, a 24-year-old man opened fire at his former school in a Rio de Janeiro suburb in the bloodiest gun attack on a school to date, killing 12 schoolchildren before committing suicide. In March 2019, two former high school students in the São Paulo region shot dead eight people and wounded 11 others before turning the gun on themselves. (aeg/sda/afp)