By EFE
19 Oct 2024, 12:02 PM EDT
A 14 year old student shot dead three companions in a public school in the Brazilian state of Bahia and then took his own life, official sources reported.
The attack occurred on Friday afternoon at the Don Pedro I Municipal School, in Heliópolis, a city in the interior of the state of Bahia, according to the regional Public Security Secretariat.
The young man entered the school carrying a 38 caliber revolver and he headed towards his classroom, where he shot his three classmates, two young girls and a teenager between 14 and 15 years old, who died immediately. The attacker committed suicide in the same room.
The governor of Bahia, Jerónimo Rodrigues, regretted the new incident of school violence in Brazil in a message he published on social networks, in which he offered all the necessary support to the municipal authorities and the families of the victims.
“I have just received the sad and regrettable news of the death of four young peoplestudents of the municipal network in the city of Heliópolis. My feelings to all the students’ families and colleagues,” said the governor.
Rodrigues also said that he determined that the Ministry of Public Security carry out an exhaustive investigation of what happened and determine if there were others responsible for the tragedy.
Other similar facts
In October of last year, after a school shooting in São Paulo that left one student dead and three others injuredthe Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, stated that it could not be considered normal for young people to have access to weapons.
Lula is a harsh critic of the policy of making the carrying and possession of weapons more flexible promoted by his predecessor, the far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, in his Government (2019-2022).
Shortly after assuming his third term as head of state in January 2023, the progressive invalidated several of Bolsonaro’s measures that facilitated the possession of weapons.
Last year they registered at least nine armed attacks in Brazilian schoolsalmost a third of that in 2022.
The increase in the number of cases led the Government to present a bill to Congress for consideration last year that converts attacks in schools into a “stinking crime” (atrocious) and increases prison sentences for aggressors by almost a third. .
The project was presented shortly after an attack on a children’s school in the southern city of Blumenau, in which Four children died and five others were injured..
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