SAO PAULO/RIO DE JANEIRO, (Reuters) – At least one student has died after a school shooting in Brazil’s southern city of Cambe yesterday, the Parana state government said in a statement, adding that another wounded student has been hospitalized.
The perpetrator has been arrested and is a former student of the Professora Helena Kolody public school who entered its premises saying he wanted to request his school records, the government said.
Governor Ratinho Junior declared three days of mourning and sent his public safety and education secretaries to Cambe, a city of 108,000 people located some 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Parana’s capital city of Curitiba.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said it is crucial that the country finds a way to build peace in schools.
“Another young life taken by hatred and violence that we can no longer tolerate inside our schools and in society,” Lula said in a Twitter post.
Earlier this year, a man armed with a small axe climbed over a wall into a creche in Southern Brazil and killed four children, while in a Sao Paulo school a 13-year-old student stabbed a teacher to death and wounded five others.
Justice Minister Flavio Dino said after the attack that “this type of violence that has been implanted in Brazil is unacceptable,” adding that “violence was once again perpetrated in the most sacred place for children.”
