13-year-old student kills 2 women at school in Brazil, authorities say

A school shooting Tuesday in Acre state in northern Brazil left two women dead and two others injured, including an underage student, authorities said.

The state government said in a statement that a 13-year-old student admitted carrying out the attack at the public school Instituto Sao Jose in Rio Branco, the state capital.

The two fatalities were female staff members who died at the scene. Another staff member and a student were injured by gunfire and taken to a hospital. The injured student, an 11-year-old girl, was shot in the leg.

Officials did not disclose the victims’ identities. Police said the suspect was detained and used a gun owned by a legal guardian. Local media reported the weapon belonged to the teenager’s stepfather, who was also detained.

The suspect fired several shots in a hallway leading to the principal’s office, Lieutenant Colonel Felipe Russo of the Acre military police department told reporters. He surrendered to police after the attack.

Eduardo Rodrigues Cavalcante, a receptionist at a hotel adjacent to the school, described scenes of terror, as some students tried to jump over a wall separating the school from the hotel.

“The wall is six meters high, and only one person managed to jump over and take refuge here in the hotel. The other people were left on the school roof trying to escape,” the 19-year-old receptionist said, adding that he heard “gunshots and a lot of screaming.”

Images released by a local media outlet showed a woman being evacuated on a stretcher and scenes of heartbreak outside the school, with people crying and hugging each other.

“The state expresses deep solidarity with the victims’ families, the school community of Instituto Sao Jose and all education professionals affected by this incident,” Acre Gov. Mailza Assis said in a statement.

Officials said that classes had been suspended for three days at all schools in the state and that psychological support teams had been mobilized to assist students and teachers.

Brazil has seen a sharp increase in attacks on educational institutions in recent years.

In September 2025, two teenagers were shot and killed, and three others were wounded at a school in the northeastern state of Ceara.

In October 2023, a shooting at a school in Sao Paulo left a 17-year-old student dead and three others wounded. That same year, a teenager was killed and three others were wounded in a knife attack as they left a school in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.

In April 2023, a 25-year-old man entered a daycare center in the southern state of Santa Catarina and killed four children between the ages of 3 and 7 with an axe.

In 2022, a former student armed with a semiautomatic pistol and a revolver killed four people and wounded 12 in two schools in Brazil. Police later said the suspect had a swastika pinned to his vest and had been planning the attacks for two years.