Rio de Janeiro school shooting

On the morning of Thursday, 7 April 2011, a World Health Day, 12 students aged between 13 and 15 years old were killed and 22 others seriously wounded by Wellington Menezes de Oliveira, who entered the Tasso da Silveira Municipal School (Escola Municipal Tasso da Silveira), an elementary school in Realengo on the western fringe of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It was the first non-gang school shooting with a sizable number of casualties reported in Brazil. Although police found no concrete evidence of religious or political motives, texts found at Oliveira's home suggest that he was obsessed with terrorist acts and Islam, which he had converted to two years beforehand, after having been a Jehovah's Witness. In his last wishes, he requested to be buried following Islamic traditions, and asked Jesus for eternal life and "God's forgiveness for what I have done." A lone gunman, Wellington Oliveira, entered the Tasso da Silveira at around 08:30 local time, identifying himself as a former student and asking to see his school history; as such, he was allowed to enter, but instead of heading to the school's office he proceeded to the second floor and entered an eighth-grade classroom. Some of the victim's accounts say that he was initially very polite, greeting the children and putting his bag on a table, but soon after shot several pupils. The perpetrator was armed with a .38-caliber revolver and a .32-caliber revolver with a number of speedloaders. A boy who survived the attack said that Oliveira selectively shot to kill girls while shooting boys only to immobilize them. Ten of the twelve children killed were girls. The children ran out of the Tasso da Silveira as soon as Oliveira started shooting. Two policemen who were patrolling the area were alerted to the shooting by two boys who had been wounded in the face. As the policemen arrived at the school, the gunman had already left the classroom and was preparing to proceed to the third floor where students and teachers had barricaded themselves inside the remaining classrooms.