CURITIBA, Brazil — Police in southern Brazil shot and killed a man who held 13 young children hostage for more than three hours inside a municipal kindergarten in Curitiba on Friday, after he spread a flammable liquid around a classroom and began hitting the children, officials said, Al Jazeera and Brazil’s g1 reported.
The man jumped the gate of the early-childhood center in the São Braz neighborhood, broke into a classroom and held the children, aged 4 and 5, armed with a knife, a fake firearm and a lighter, police said. “During the entire negotiation, he stayed with all the children around him and one on his lap,” said Col. Alexandre Lopes Dias, who commands the Paraná military police’s special missions unit, according to Al Jazeera. Children in other classrooms were able to leave, and a neighboring school was evacuated.
Lopes Dias said that as the children grew more distressed, the man began assaulting them, prompting a tactical entry by the BOPE special operations battalion at about 6:20 p.m.; the man was shot as he tried to grab one of the children, g1 reported. Police identified him only afterward and said he suffered from schizophrenia; his motive was unclear. “Our negotiating teams were in place but saw no alternative but to neutralise him,” police spokesperson Leticia Martins said.
All 13 children were rescued. Only one had visible injuries, bruises to the face, and five were taken to an urgent care unit at their parents’ request, Lopes Dias said. “The 13 children are alive and safe! After anguishing and tense moments, this is the news we were all waiting for,” Curitiba Mayor Eduardo Pimentel wrote on Instagram. The city said the children, their families and school staff would receive psychological support.
Brazil has seen multiple attacks on schools in recent years. In April 2023, a man killed four children with an axe at a day care center in Blumenau, also in southern Brazil, Al Jazeera noted. Curitiba, the capital of Paraná state, has about 1.8 million residents.
Sources: Al Jazeera, g1
—
