A 13-year-old boy opened fire at Instituto São José in Rio Branco, Brazil, on Tuesday, May 5, 2026, killing two female staff members and wounding an 11-year-old girl and another staff member, authorities said. The shooting took place in a corridor leading to the principal’s office at the public school in Acre state in northwestern Brazil.
Police detained the teenage suspect at the scene. Investigators said the firearm was registered to his stepfather, who was also detained while authorities work to determine how the boy accessed the weapon.
Eduardo Rodrigues Cavalcante, a 19-year-old receptionist at a hotel next to the school, witnessed panicked students trying to escape. Some climbed onto the roof while others tried to scale the concrete wall separating the school from his workplace.
“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,” Cavalcante told reporters, adding that he heard “gunshots and a lot of screaming.”
A State in Mourning
Both women who were killed died at the scene. The injured student and staff member were taken to a hospital for treatment. Authorities withheld the names of the victims as relatives gathered outside the school, embracing and crying while emergency workers brought a woman out on a stretcher.
Acre Governor Mailza Assis suspended classes statewide for three days and sent psychological support teams to help traumatized students, educators, and families cope. Counselors started arriving at schools in the state capital on Wednesday morning.
“The state expresses deep solidarity with the victims’ families, the school community of Instituto São José and all education professionals affected by this incident,” Assis said in a statement.
Local broadcasts showed the immediate aftermath: a woman on a stretcher being evacuated, parents collapsing into each other’s arms outside the gates, students still holding onto classmates as they were led away. The school is located in a residential area of Rio Branco, surrounded by businesses and the hotel where Cavalcante was on duty when the shooting began.
Part of a Grim Pattern
The violence continues a disturbing trend of school attacks across Brazil that have claimed dozens of lives in recent years, prompting national debate about firearms access, campus safety, and online radicalization of young males.
The most lethal recent attack occurred in April 2023, when a 25-year-old man killed four children ages three to seven with an axe at a Santa Catarina daycare center. One year before that, a former student carrying a semiautomatic pistol and revolver killed four people and injured 12 in coordinated strikes on two schools. That shooter wore a swastika on his vest and had spent two years planning the attacks, police later determined.
Two teenagers were killed and three wounded at a school in northeastern Ceara state in September 2025. That same state saw a 2022 school shooting in which a teenager fired on three classmates, killing one. In October 2023, a 17-year-old student was fatally shot and three others were injured at a Sao Paulo school. Also in 2023, a teenager died and three were wounded when a knife-wielding attacker struck students leaving a Minas Gerais school.
Investigation Now Underway
Ace investigators are examining how a 13-year-old managed to bring a loaded firearm into the school and whether warning signs were missed. Lieutenant Colonel Felipe Russo of the Acre military police said the boy fired multiple shots before surrendering, and authorities have not yet determined whether he was a current or former student. The boy remains in custody while his stepfather, who legally owned the weapon, faces questions about how it was stored.
Rio Branco, a city of approximately 413,000 people in the western Amazon, had long viewed such attacks as distant tragedies. By Wednesday, the state government had renewed its condolences to the families of the slain women and promised a thorough investigation into how the violence occurred.