According to Brazilian media, the 13-year-old suspect appears to have been inspired by a deadly school shooting in 2019.
A teacher was fatally stabbed in an attack on a school in Sao Paulo, Brazil, injuring three other teachers and two students.
Officials have identified a 13-year-old student as responsible for the knife attack, which took place at about 07:20 local time (10:20 GMT) on Monday at Thomazia Montoro public school.
Sao Paulo state governor Tarcisio Gomes de Freitas said on Twitter that the suspect had been apprehended. No motive has been confirmed so far.
“I have no words to express my grief,” de Freitas wrote in his post.
He also expressed “much regret and sadness” over the death of 71-year-old science teacher Elisabete Tenreiro, who was killed in the attack. After being stabbed, officials say Tenreiro went into cardiac arrest and died.
Three days of mourning have been declared in memory of Tenreiro. Officials said the injured teachers and students were being treated at four local hospitals.
Students and adults walk away from Thomazia Montoro where a teacher was stabbed to death Monday morning (Carla Carniel/Reuters)
Sao Paulo’s Public Security Minister Guilherme Derrite applauded the “heroic acts” of a physical education teacher who “immobilized” the teenage suspect and thus avoided “a greater tragedy”.
In an interview with the Associated Press news agency, a 13-year-old boy from the school said the suspect, a classmate, had an argument with another student last week and that Tenreiro had intervened.
He added that the suspect seemed angry with Tenreiro and threatened to do something about the teacher’s actions.
On Monday morning, the student said the suspect appeared dressed in a skull mask and stabbed the teacher from behind.
Brazilian newspaper Folha reported that the suspect wrote on Twitter under the username “Taucci,” an apparent reference to a March 2019 school shooting that took place in Suzano, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo.
There, two former students identified as 17-year-old Guilherme Taucci Monteiro and 25-year-old Luiz Henrique de Castro opened fire at Raul Brasil State School, killing five students and two school employees before dying by suicide. Ten other students were also injured.
Investigators later said that Monteiro and Castro were inspired by the 1999 Columbine High School massacre in the United States, at the time the deadliest school shooting in that country’s history.
It has been ever since surpassed by shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, and Robb Elementary School in 2022.
Another US school shooting occurred Monday morning in Nashville, Tennessee, on the same day as the Brazil attack. Six people, including three children, were killed in the attack.
Brazil’s incident on Monday also comes nearly a month after a teacher in southwest France was stabbed to death by a 16-year-old student.
Brazilian officials said the 13-year-old suspect had been researching gun purchases online prior to the stabbing in Sao Paulo.
