The aftermath of the four children killed on Wednesday in the Brazilian city of Blumenau, in the south of the country, in an attack on a children’s school, has been marked by an atmosphere of consternation among the entire population.
Dozens of mourners gathered at the Blumenau Nursery to pray, lay flowers for the victims — aged between 5 and 7 — and mourn their deaths. At least four other children were injured in the attack, the second at a Brazilian school in 10 days, putting pressure on the government to find solutions to contain such attacks.
Employees of the Cantinho do Bom Pastor kindergarten, where the four children were murdered, and even residents of distant neighborhoods brought candles and offered prayers in front of the main entrance of the educational unit.
This Thursday morning, relatives and loved ones of the victims gathered in the center at the cemetery of São José for the first three burials. The parents usually sat silently next to the small coffins.
The four victims were only children with no siblings, Mayor Mario Hildebrandt told reporters in the wake of the attack.
The case shocked Brazil, a country with a history of violence against blacks and the poor, which has followed in the footsteps of the United States and has become a country where unjustified and violent attacks against schools have increased in recent years. According to an investigation by local media, there have been 24 cases of attacks on schools in the country in the past 22 years.
One of the survivors, teacher Simone Aparecida Camargo, talked about the desperation she experienced and what she did to save other students after the killer, a 25-year-old man, jumped over the wall and started attacking the girls for no apparent reason with a small axe children who were on the scene, killing four of them and injuring four others.
“My classmate came running in and said ‘close the door, close the window because a man has robbed the station’. We thought it was a robbery because he broke into the school, but I locked the babies in the bathroom, when they came to the door saying he “came to kill,” he went to the park to kill,” the teacher told NSC TV.
“On the playground, the whole gang was talking in the park” and the killer “had more than one gun,” he added. The authorities have not yet been able to give a motive for the attack.
In a matter of hours, the federal government tried to formulate a strategy to combat the problem.
Brazil’s Justice Minister, Flávio Dino, met with student association representatives and told reporters in Brasília that he would allocate 150 million reais (27.1 million euros) from the national security fund to strengthen police patrols in schools.
Dino explained that the money will be used both for police reinforcements and for the expansion of a team, based in Brasilia, that will be set up to monitor communities in the region. deep webplaces on the internet where hate speech and violence are glorified and encouraged.
On Thursday, the minister also announced the opening of an investigation into the activities of Nazi and neo-Nazi groups in the country, following this attack on the school in Blumenau and a similar episode that took place ten days ago in São Paulo.
In this other case, which took place in Brazil’s largest city, a 13-year-old boy, apparently an adherent of neo-Nazi ideology and inspired by hate speech, killed a teacher, injured three other teachers and a student in an attack in which he used a knife as a weapon.
Source: DN
