SAO PAULO (AP) — A teenager opened fire at a high school in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo early Monday, killing one student and wounding two others, authorities said.
The Folha de S.Paulo newspaper identified the assailant as a male student at the high school who was a frequent target of bullying and said that the victim who died was a 17-year-old girl who was shot in the head.
Authorities did not immediately release details about the suspected shooter, but the Sao Paulo state government said in a statement that police took him into custody. Two students were wounded in the shooting, and one other was hurt in a scramble to escape. All three were brought to a hospital, it said.
“At this moment, the priority is attending to the victims and psychological support to students, teachers and family members,” the statement said.
This was Brazil’s first school attack in months, following a rash of them earlier this year. There have been almost two dozen violent episodes in Brazilian schools since 2000, half in the last 18 months. The newly empowered government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva launched an all-hands effort across federal, state and municipal levels in April to stamp out the emerging trend.
“My condolences to the family of the murdered young woman and the injured students,” President Lula wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Monday. “We cannot normalize affordable guns for young people in our society and tragedies like these.”
It was not immediately clear how the assailant obtained his firearm.
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