By According to police and government officials in the state of Santa Catarina, the attacker, who scaled a wall to enter, also injured four other children at the private preschool known as the Good Shepherd Center in the city of Blumenau.
Afterward, according to investigators, he took a motorcycle to a state police station and turned himself up.
The preschool’s exterior wall is adorned in vibrant paintings of kids and butterflies, and dozens of people gathered there. Only parents were allowed inside due to the security perimeter that emergency personnel and police had established.
Bruno Bridi, the distraught father of dead 5-year-old Bernardo, was the only parent outdoors. He described Bernardo and a companion as being bouncing like bunnies when he was dropped off at school in the morning.
With tears, he remarked, “I simply thank God for every second I got to spend with my son.
On April 5, 2023, an attacker used a bladed weapon to kill four children outside a private preschool in Blumenau, Santa Catarina State, southern Brazil. (AFP/Anderson Coelho photo)
Images of young children wrapped in white blankets on the preschool playground and a mother sobbing as she leaves the building while carrying her kid, who survived the incident, were shown in Brazilian media.
Andre Nazario, whose wife works there, claimed that when he spoke with her, she had recounted a horrifying scenario.
She claimed that she went to the playground after the person left and noticed the (victims). Evidently, she attempted to perform CPR on one of them it didn’t work. She was in a state of shock,” he told journalists.
Journalists were told by emergency official Diogo de Souza Clarindo that the perpetrator primarily attacked his victims in the head.
Clarinda said that he killed four children, three boys, and one girl, all between the ages of five and seven.
The hospital caring for the injured kids, two boys and two girls, all between the ages of three and five, reported that their conditions were stable.
He went out to kill
According to the authorities, the attacker was a resident of Santa Catarina who had been arrested at least four times before, including for stabbing his stepfather.
Ulisses Gabriel, the police chief, ruled out a “organized” attack by saying that he committed the crime alone.
Simone Aparecida Camargo, a preschool teacher, related how the assailant killed his victims on the playground while concealing other kids in a lavatory.
She told the news outlet Metropoles that “he went to the playground to kill.”
Blumenau, a 360,000-person community that is often peaceful, canceled Easter Sunday festivities and classes and proclaimed 30 days of grief.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president, denounced the assault.
He said on Twitter that “there is no greater anguish than a family losing children or grandchildren, especially more so when it is in a violent act against innocent and helpless children.”
“In the wake of this heinous attack, my thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and the Blumenau community.”
Later, prior to a function in the presidential palace, he observed a moment of silence for “the victims of this barbarity.”
She told the news outlet Metropoles that “he went to the playground to kill.”
Blumenau, a 360,000-person community that is often peaceful, canceled Easter Sunday festivities and classes and proclaimed 30 days of grief.
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the president, denounced the assault.
He said on Twitter that “there is no greater anguish than a family losing children or grandchildren, especially more so when it is in a violent act against innocent and helpless children.”
“In the wake of this heinous attack, my thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims and the Blumenau community.”
In a pair of shootings at two schools in the southeasterly city of Aracruz, in the Espirito Santo state, in November, a 16-year-old shooter also left four dead and more than 10 injured.
In 2011, a man opened fire at his former elementary school in the Rio de Janeiro district of Realengo, killing 12 children in the nation’s deadliest school shooting before taking his own life.
Additionally, there have been numerous incidents of fatal violence at preschools.
In 2017, a security guard at a preschool in the town of Janauba in the southeast sprayed a group of kids with alcohol before lighting them on fire. Nine kids and a teacher perished, and over 40 other people were injured.
Officials claimed that the deceased guy had “mental difficulties.”
In the same state as Wednesday’s attack, Santa Catarina, an 18-year-old man attacked a preschool with a knife in 2021 and killed three small children as well as two employees.
Overhead photograph was taken on April 5, 2023, of the private preschool in Blumenau, Santa Catarina State, southern Brazil, when a perpetrator used a bladed weapon to kill four children. (AFP/Anderson Coelho photo)
