A 13-year-old boy armed with his stepfather’s gun opened fire inside Instituto São José in Rio Branco, Brazil, on Tuesday, May 5, 2026, killing two female staff members and wounding two others in a corridor shooting that sent terrified students scrambling for safety, authorities said.
The attack in Acre state also left an 11-year-old girl shot in the leg and a second staff member injured. Both women who died were killed at the scene, while the wounded student and staff member received hospital treatment.
By the time police reached the northwestern Brazilian school, the teenage gunman had already been detained. The firearm used in the shooting was registered to his stepfather, identified by authorities as his legal guardian, who was also detained while investigators work to determine how the boy gained access to the weapon.
Witness Describes Desperate Escape Attempts
Eduardo Rodrigues Cavalcante, a 19-year-old receptionist at a hotel adjacent to the school, witnessed terrified students fleeing. Some climbed onto the roof. Others attempted to scale the concrete wall dividing the two properties.
“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.”
Lieutenant Colonel Felipe Russo of the Acre military police department said the boy fired multiple shots in a hallway leading to the principal’s office before surrendering. Authorities have not determined whether he currently attends or previously attended Instituto São José, and Acre police have launched a formal investigation. 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.
Governor Suspends Classes, Sends Counselors
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.
Latest in Series of Brazilian School Attacks
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.
Authorities Probe How Boy Obtained Firearm
Acre investigators face the task of reconstructing how a 13-year-old brought a loaded gun into a school and whether anyone in his life noticed warning signs beforehand. The boy remains in custody, and his stepfather must answer questions about how the weapon was stored and accessed.
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.
