(The Turkish Post) – Police in the southern Brazilian city of Curitiba killed a man who held 13 young children hostage for more than two hours at a municipal kindergarten on Friday, Oct. 9, and freed all of the children alive, authorities said.
The children, aged 4 and 5, were rescued when the special operations battalion of Paraná state’s Military Police (BOPE) stormed the classroom. Police said at least one child was hurt by the attacker, but none of the children suffered serious injuries.
The man’s name and motive have not been released. Police said after his death that he had schizophrenia.
How the Curitiba hostage crisis unfolded
The man got into the city-run early childhood education center in Curitiba’s São Braz neighborhood on Friday afternoon by climbing over its fence. He locked himself in a classroom with the children, spread a flammable liquid around the room and held a lighter, threatening to set the building on fire.
He carried a knife and what appeared to be a gun. Police later found that the gun was a replica.
Teachers and staff led children from other classrooms out of the building while the standoff went on. Police sealed off the surrounding streets, and a police helicopter circled overhead.
Negotiations end in a tactical raid
Specialist negotiators talked with the man for about two and a half to three hours, according to police. Throughout the talks he kept the children close around him.
As the children grew more distressed, the man began to hit them, police said, and commanders ordered a tactical intervention. Local media reported several shots and blasts that sounded like stun grenades before officers carried the children out of the building.
Lieutenant Letícia Martins, a spokesperson for the Paraná Military Police, said the attacker died at the scene and that all 13 children were well.
Support for families in Curitiba
Curitiba Mayor Eduardo Pimentel wrote on Instagram that “the 13 children are alive and safe.” The city government said psychologists from its education department would support the children, their families and the school’s staff, and that the children would undergo medical checks. In a statement, the city also thanked the police and other security forces for ending the standoff.
Paraná’s state public security department said it had no confirmed information on any link between the man and the children at the school.
Curitiba, the capital of Paraná state, has about 1.8 million residents and lies about 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of São Paulo.
A string of school attacks in Brazil
Brazil has seen a series of attacks on schools and day care centers in recent years, several of them in the country’s south.
On April 5, 2023, a 25-year-old man killed four young children with a hatchet at a private day care center in Blumenau, a city in the neighboring state of Santa Catarina. Five other children were injured, and the attacker turned himself in to police. Nine days earlier, on March 27, a 13-year-old student had stabbed a teacher to death at a school in São Paulo.
After the Blumenau attack, Brazil’s Justice Ministry launched a nationwide police operation against online threats to schools, known as Operation Safe School (Operação Escola Segura). The ministry asked Twitter and TikTok to remove 433 accounts that promoted school attacks, and set up a channel with the internet safety group SaferNet Brasil for reporting threats.
On April 19, 2023, police carried out raids in five states under the operation, including orders to detain 10 teenagers suspected of planning school attacks through an online platform and 13 search warrants.
In June 2023, a former student opened fire at a state school in Cambé, also in Paraná, killing two students. By then, the ministry said, 368 adults and adolescents had been arrested or detained under the operation since April.
