On the morning of April 7, 2011, 12 children aged between 10 and 13 were killed and 20 others seriously wounded after an armed man entered Tasso da Silveira Municipal School (Escola Municipal Tasso da Silveira), an elementary school in Realengo on the western fringe of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is the first time an incident of this kind — a non-gang school shooting with a sizable number of casualties — has been reported in the country.

Incident and casualties

A lone gunman, Wellington Oliveira, entered the school at around 08:30 local time, identifying himself as a former student and asking to see his school history. By presenting himself as such his entrance was allowed, but instead of heading to the school's office he proceeded to the second floor, entering an eighth grade classroom. Some of the victim's accounts say that he was initially very polite, saluting the children and putting his bag on a table, but soon after shot a number of pupils. The perpetrator was armed with a .38-caliber and a .32-caliber revolver with a number of speedloaders. A boy who survived the attack said that Oliveira selectively shot girls while shooting boys only to immobilize them. Ten of the twelve children killed were girls.

The children ran out of the school as soon as Oliveira started shooting. Two policemen who were patrolling the area were alerted to the shooting by two boys who were wounded in the face. As the policemen arrived at the school, the gunman had already left the classroom and was preparing to proceed to the third floor where students and teachers had barricaded themselves inside the remaining classrooms. Rio de Janeiro military policeman Third Sergeant Márcio Alexandre Alves shot the gunman in the leg and in the stomach; he fell down a staircase and then committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

The victims were between 10 and 13 years old. Eleven of the twelve students were buried the day after the shooting in the Brazilian tradition of holding services within a day of a person's death. The twelfth child's body was cremated two days after the shooting.

Perpetrator

The perpetrator was identified as Wellington Menezes de Oliveira (July 13, 1987 - April 7, 2011) a 23-year-old former pupil of the school. Local police confirmed they had a letter stating the perpetrator's intention to commit suicide. The police stressed that they found no concrete evidence of a religious or political motive for the attack. Texts found at Oliveira's home suggest that he was obsessed with terrorist acts and Islam which he described as the most correct religion. A neighbor said Oliveira had turned to Islam two years beforehand. In his letters, Oliveira states that he attended the mosque in downtown Rio and that he would study the Qur'an for four hours daily. He also describes his association with "Abdul", who came from overseas and who boasted about having taken part in the September 11 attacks. He also indicated his desire to move to a Muslim majority country, either Egypt or Malaysia. However, both Jehovah's Witnesses and Islam leaders in Rio denied Oliveira's claims.

Oliveira attended Tasso da Silveira Municipal School from 1999 to 2002. According to former schoolmates he was a strange, very reserved person constantly harassed by others, was called "Sherman" (an allusion to a character from American Pie), as well as "suingue" (swing), because he had a limp leg, and was thrown into a garbage bin. In a video he had recorded two days prior to the shooting Oliveira stated: "The struggle for which many brothers died in the past, and for which I will die, is not solely because of what is known as bullying. Our fight is against cruel people, cowards, who take advantage of the kindness, the weakness of people unable to defend themselves."
(A luta pela qual muitos irmãos no passado morreram, e eu morrerei, não é exclusivamente pelo que é conhecido como bullying. A nossa luta é contra pessoas cruéis, covardes, que se aproveitam da bondade, da fraqueza de pessoas incapazes de se defenderem.)

As none of his relatives reclaimed Oliveira's body, it was buried in a potter's field at the Caju Cemetery two weeks after his death.

Victims

The list of victims was released by police in Rio de Janeiro. The families of four victims decided to donate the victims' organs. Six injured children required further treatment, two of them in critical condition.

Investigation

The police estimate that over 60 shots were fired by the perpetrator during the shooting. His body was found with two pistols, a .38 caliber and a .32 caliber, some speedloaders and a bandolier with 18 unused rounds.

The .32 revolver belonged to a man who died in 1994 and according to his son, it was stolen from him by the time of his death. The police apprehended the two men who illegally sold the weapon to the perpetrator, who, according to them, claimed he needed the firearm for his own protection.

Despite the .38 revolver had its serial number almost totally scratched-off, the Police managed to locate the weapon's original owner, a 57 year-old man who works on a slaughterhouse and is a former co-worker of the perpetrator. According to the seller he sold not only the weapon to Wellington but also the speedloaders and a huge quantity of ammo, possibly the same rounds used in the shooting.

Perpetrator's letter

First of all you should know that the impure ones shall not touch me without gloves, only the chaste ones or those who lost their chastity after wedlock and were not involved in adultery shall touch me without gloves, in other words, no fornicator or adulterer shall have direct contact with me, nor should anything that is impure touch my blood, no impure person shall have contact with a virgin without their permission, those who prepare my burial shall remove all my garments, bathe me, dry me and drape me completely undressed in a white sheet which is in this building, in a bag that I have left in the primary room of the first floor, after wrapping me in this sheet they shall put me in my coffin. If possible, I want to be buried alongside the grave where my mother lies. My mother is called Dicéa Menezes de Oliveira and she is buried in Murundu cemetery. I need a visit from a faithful follower of the Lord to my grave at least once, I need him to pray in front of my grave asking for God's forgiveness for what I have done imploring that Jesus on his return wake me from the sleep of death for eternal life. I have left a house in Sepetiba of which none of my family members need, there are poor institutions, financed by generous people who take care of abandoned animals, I want this space where I spent my last months to be donated to one of these institutions, because animals are very unappreciated beings and need much more protection and affection than human beings who have the advantage of being able to communicate, work to feed themselves, therefore, those who take my house, I please ask to have good sense and fulfill my request, by fulfilling my request, you will fulfill the will of the parents who wished to pass this estate onto me and everybody knows this, if you do not fulfill my request, automatically you will be disrespecting the will of my parents, which will prove that you have no consideration for them, I believe that you all have respect for our parents, prove this by doing what I asked.

— Wellington Menezes de Oliveira

National response

President Dilma Rousseff declared three days of national mourning and shed tears during her speech to the public regarding the incident.

The State Governor, Sérgio Cabral, and the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro, Eduardo Paes, addressed the press at the site of the shooting a few hours later. Cabral described the sergeant, teachers and children from the elementary school, who were able to call policemen who were nearby, as "heroes". "Without them, the tragedy would have been much worse", he said.

The incident has sparked nation-wide discussions about how safe Brazilian schools are, and the government also promised to advance the disarmament program which will last from May 6, 2011 until the end of the year.

On April 9, 2011, the house where Wellington de Oliveira lived was subject of pixação with writings saying "Murderer" and "Coward". Two days later, a group of locals and former students of the school repainted the house stating that people "should not continue the harm that he has caused".

Hundreds of residents and students from other schools gathered outside the school to remember the ones who died. Posters and flowers were left in front the school.

On April 10, a group of protesters hung blood-stained Brazilian flags on Copacabana beach in honor of the children who died in the shooting.

At the end of a concert in São Paulo, Bono Vox, from Irish band U2, asked almost 80 thousand people to remember the children who died in Realengo while their names scrolled up on a screen.

The three policemen who responded to the shooting were condecorated for act of bravery by the Brazilian vice president Michel Temer on April 12, 2011. Third Sergeant Márcio Alexandre Alves was promoted to Second Sergeant; Corporals Denilson Francisco de Paula and Ednei Feliciano da Silva were promoted to Third Sergeant.

International response

The International press stated how the Brazilian public opinion was shocked with the shooting as it was the first time an incident of this kind occurred in the country.

The archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, Orani João Tempesta, received a letter from Pope Benedict XVI, where he states that he prayed for the quick recovery of the wounded and asked all people of the city to "help build a society with no violence and respect to each other, especially for the weak and oppressed".

Students from Columbine, Colorado, same site of the 1999 massacre, made a poster, stating their feelings about the tragedy. The poster will be sent to the Brazilian elementary school.