bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

sponsorType

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

quizIds

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

paywallTypes

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Agencies

The mother of one of two former students who shot dead eight people a Brazil school before committing suicide said her son had been “bullied” there.
Her statement came as investigators sought a motive to the bloody rampage that police said was possibly inspired by the 1999 Columbine massacre in the United States
The hooded attackers, named as 17-year-old Guilherme Taucci Monteiro and 25-year-old Henrique de Castro, armed themselves with a gun, knives, axes and crossbows, for their assault Wednesday on Raul Brasil public school in Suzano, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo in southeast Brazil.
They killed five students and two adults before one killed the other and then himself, authorities said.
The men also shot and killed the owner of a used car business nearby before launching the attack on the school, authorities said.
Besides the five students, the dead included a teacher and a school administrator, said Joao Camilo Pires de Campos, the state’s public secretary.


Nine others were wounded in the school attack and hospitalised, he said.
“This is the saddest day of my life,” de Campos said.
“The big question is: what was the motivation of these former students?”
Monteiro’s mother, Tatiana Taucci, offered a possible answer, telling Band News while hiding her face from the camera that her son had been bullied at the school.
“Bullying, they call it. … He stopped going to school … because of this,” she said.
She said she was surprised by his involvement and found out about the attack from the television like everyone else.
Minutes before the attack, Monteiro, who an investigator said was the leader and main planner, posted 26 photos on his Facebook page, included several posing with a gun and one that showed him giving the middle finger as he looked into the camera.

In some of the photos, he wore a black scarf with a white imprint of a skull and cross bones. No text accompanied the posts.
Facebook later removed Monteiro’s page.
Security camera footage from the school’s entrance published on the website of O Globo newspaper showed Monteiro entering the school around 9:30am.
He immediately pulled a pistol out of his jeans and shot into a group of eight students, hitting at least two, who dropped to the floor.
Castro entered the school a few seconds later and put a crossbow and backpack on the floor. He then pulled out an axe and hacked at the bodies on the ground.

Students flooded into the entrance foyer, running into Monteiro. He grabbed one girl by the hair and punched her several times in the face.
She managed to escape, and students frantically scrambled out of the school.
The attackers were also carrying petrol bombs, authorities said.
With a record 63,880 murders last year, Brazil is easily the world’s most homicidal nation
“In 34 years as a policeman, it’s the first time I see someone use a crossbow like that,” police Colonel Marcelo Salles said.
“It is horrendous.”
Police arrived eight minutes after the shooting started, and the attackers were already dead, Salles said. Investigators said they had a pact to die together in the attack although Globo TV, citing police, reported that Monteiro killed Castro, and then turned the pistol on himself.

Crime scene photographs released by police show Monteiro, his head lying in a pool of blood, dressed in black with a machete tucked in his pants.
Castro’s body lay near Monteiro’s, with the crossbow on the ground between the pair.
The two assailants spent more than a year planning their attack, which they “hoped would draw more attention than the Columbine massacre,” an investigator said on condition of anonymity.
Bulletproof on a budget: forget the limo, Brazil’s bestselling armoured car is a Corolla
In the 1999 attack on Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, two students killed 13 people.
The Raul Brasil Professor public school has more than 1,600 students from elementary to high school grades.
It is not the first mass school shooting in Brazil’s history.

In April 2011, a former pupil killed a dozen schoolchildren and injured many more before turning his gun on himself at a school in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro.
Brazil is one of the most violent countries in the world, with 64,000 murders in 2017 – a rate of almost 31 per 100,000 inhabitants, or three times higher than the level the United Nations classifies as endemic violence.
President Jair Bolsonaro expressed his sympathies on Twitter to “the families of this inhumane attack,” describing it as “a monstrosity and enormous cowardice”.
Bolsonaro controversially passed a law relaxing gun ownership rules soon after assuming power in January, delivering on a campaign promise.
He has also spoken out in favour of allowing people to carry weapons on the streets.
Politicians and social media users were quick to debate whether Bolsonaro’s measures, or images from similar such mass shootings on US schools and university campuses, were to blame for this attack.
Associated Press, Reuters, Agence France-Presse


Peruvians celebrate new pope from adoptive city, praise his ‘big heart’

Mexico sues Google over ‘Gulf of America’ name change

Robert Prevost chosen as new pope, first US pontiff in history

Venezuela denies opposition members left country in rescue operation

Americas and the Caribbean

‘Bullied’ ex-student posted chilling Facebook photos before deadly school shooting in Brazil

epa07435278 A notebook in which it reads in English 'Can't Run', found in the vehicle used by Guilherme Taucci Monteiro and Luiz Henrique de Castro, believed to be perpetrators of a massacre at a school in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 13 March 2019. Ten dead, including five minors, and another 10 injured is the provisional balance of the massacre happened in the metropolitan region of Sao Paulo, considered one of the worst school tragedies in Brazil. The shooting at the Raul Brasil school in Suzano, 60 kilometers from Sao Paulo, was perpetrated by a teenager (Taucci Monteiro, 17) and a 25-year-old man (de Castro), who would be former students and who later committed suicide. EPA-EFE/SEBASTIAO MOREIRA

Relatives and friends react while paying tribute to victims of the shooting in the Raul Brasil school in Suzano, Sao Paulo state, Brazil March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Ueslei Marcelino

epa07435283 Photograph of weapons and elements seized from Guilherme Taucci Monteiro and Luiz Henrique de Castro, authors of a massacre at a school in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 13 March 2019. Ten dead, including five minors, and another 10 injured is the provisional balance of the massacre happened in the metropolitan region of Sao Paulo, considered one of the worst school tragedies in Brazil. The shooting at the Raul Brasil school in Suzano, 60 kilometers from Sao Paulo, was perpetrated by a teenager (Taucci Monteiro, 17) and a 25-year-old man (de Castro), who would be former students and who later committed suicide. EPA-EFE/SEBASTIAO MOREIRA

Guilherme Taucci Monteiro, 17, one of two attackers who shot dead eight people, most of them students and staff, at a high school near Sao Paulo. Photo: Facebook

News

World

Americas

Two assailants, who wore hoods, were identified as former pupils aged 17 and 25
Police said attack was inspired by the 1999 Columbine massacre in the United States


Two former pupils shoot dead eight people, most of them students and staff, at a high school in Brazil before turning their weapons on themselves.


Crime

‘Bullied’ ex-student posted chilling Facebook photos before deadly school shooting in Brazil

Two assailants, who wore hoods, were identified as former pupils aged 17 and 25 Police said attack was inspired by the 1999 Columbine massacre in the United States

Two assailants, who wore hoods, were identified as former pupils aged 17 and 25

Police said attack was inspired by the 1999 Columbine massacre in the United States