3 dead and 11 injured in a shooting in two schools in Brazil
At least three people were killed and 11 injured Friday when a man opened fire on two schools in southeastern Brazil, authorities said.
The mayor of Aracruz, in the state of Espírito, Santo Luis, Carlos Coutinho, told CBN radio that the gunman and a group of "criminals" attacked the two schools on Friday morning, and the gunman opened fire on a number of laboratories, killing two women and wounding nine others.
The group then headed to a second school, where the gunman shot a young woman and wounded two others, according to the mayor.
Authorities arrested the suspected shooter after a manhunt, state governor Renato Casagrande announced.
"We will continue to investigate the motive and will have more information soon," the governor wrote on Twitter.
School shootings rarely occur in Brazil, despite the high levels of gun-related activities in the South American country.
The most violent shooting incident targeting a school was in 2011, killing 12 students.
It was then that a gunman opened fire at his former elementary school in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Rialingo.
In 2019, two former students killed eight people at a high school in Suzano, on the outskirts of Sao Paulo, and then committed suicide.
The Brazilian president-elect considered the latest incident an "absurd tragedy" and expressed on Twitter his "sadness to learn of the attack."
In turn, Vice President-elect Geraldo Alckmin expressed his shock at the recent incident.
He wrote in a tweet, "I affirm my solidarity with the school community, and with the families and friends of the victims," calling for "a speedy investigation and an end to the recurrence of tragedies of this kind."
Alcmene will assume his duties on the first of January with the elected president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.
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