A GUNMAN OPENED fire in a school he used to attend in southern Brazil today, killing a 16-year-old student and badly wounding another before being arrested, authorities said.
The ex-student arrived at the primary and secondary school in the municipality of Londrina saying he needed a transcript, but took out a gun once inside and began shooting, said authorities in the state of Parana.
Brazilian media reports said the shooter was 21.
A 16-year-old girl was killed, and a boy the same age taken to the hospital in serious condition, the state security ministry said in a statement, adding that the attacker had been detained.
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva expressed “sadness and outrage” at the attack.
“Another young life taken away by hate and violence, something we can no longer tolerate in our schools or our society,” he wrote on Twitter.
Brazil, where school attacks were once a rarity, has seen an increase in such assaults recently.
In April, an attacker killed four young children with a hatchet at a school and daycare center in the southern city of Blumenau.
That incident shocked the nation and prompted the Lula administration to announce a series of measures to increase security at schools and tackle social media content seen as promoting school violence.
Brazil’s deadliest school shooting was in 2011, when a man opened fire at his former elementary school in Realengo, outside Rio de Janeiro, killing 12 children and then himself.
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