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BRASILIA, Nov. 27 (AP) — A former student with a semiautomatic pistol and a revolver who killed three and wounded 13 at two schools in Brazil wore a Nazi pinned to his vest, police said. flag, and had been planning the attack for two years.
The shootings took place Friday at a public school and a private school located on the same street in the small town of Ala Cruz in the southeastern Brazilian state of EspÃrito Santo. Two teachers and a student were killed.
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Police arrested the gunman, identified as a 16-year-old boy who had attended a public school, about four hours later, Espirito Santo Governor Renato Casagrande said. Authorities have not released the names of the suspects.
Authorities said the teen was driving from one school to another in his family’s car, with the license plate covered by a cloth.
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According to Espirito Santo Public Security Minister Márcio Celante, surveillance video showed him wearing a bulletproof vest. The gunman entered the public school’s teachers’ lounge after unlocking it.
Casagrande said the semi-automatic weapon belonged to the military police, while the revolver was a personal weapon registered in the name of the former student’s father, who was a military policeman.
The shooter was being held in a facility for juvenile offenders.
Attacks on schools are uncommon in Brazil, but have increased in frequency in recent years.
In the city of Victoria, not far from Friday’s attack, a former student entered his school in August with homemade explosives and knives. No students or teachers were injured.
A month later, in the northeastern state of Bahia, another teenager shot and killed a wheelchair-bound student with his father’s gun.
Police later concluded that both attackers had met in an online chat group.
Back in 2019, two former students entered their school and killed eight people in Suzano, São Paulo state. They later committed suicide. Friends told police they were all fascinated by the 1999 Columbine shooting in the US.
Police said the investigation was still in its preliminary stages and they were unable to draw any conclusions about a motive for Friday’s shooting. But they said the 16-year-old attacker was wearing a military uniform and a swastika.
The family said he had received psychiatric treatment, but the school did not inform him of this.
“It shows how real a culture of violence is for some people, especially young people. It’s a mental health issue that society has to deal with today,” Casagrande said.
President Jair Bolsonaro has been a staunch supporter of gun rights. Over the past four years, more than 40 decrees have made it easier for Brazilians to buy and register weapons, experts say. Brazilians buy more than a thousand weapons a day, civil society group Sou da Paz Institute said in a September report.
Earlier this year, a far-right influencer and supporter of Bolsonaro said in a podcast that a Nazi party should be created in Brazil so that freedom of expression can be enjoyed.
At the time, the president condemned the influencer’s remarks and compared Nazism to communism. But in 2021, Bolsonaro entertained guests in his office and posed for photos with German MP Beatrix von Storch, the granddaughter of one of Hitler’s ministers. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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