SAO PAULO (Reuters) – A teacher in Brazil has died after a 13-year-old student stabbed her alongside three other teachers and two classmates at a public school in Sao Paulo city, state Secretary of Public Safety Guilherme Derrite said on Monday.
The teenager has been taken to a police station to be interrogated in the company of his parents.
The other teachers affected are not at risk and the injuries to students were minor, said Sao Paulo’s Secretary of Education, Renato Feder, who added a three-day mourning period will be declared in honor of the teacher who died.
Feder said it is too early to speculate on the motive for the attack and that police will investigate.
Military police would typically have rescued the teacher via helicopter but, as she was in cardiac arrest, the rescue had to take place by land and she passed away, Derrite told journalists outside the school where the attack happened in the west of Sao Paulo.
A physical education teacher at the school restrained the student, preventing him from injuring others.
“It was a heroic act,” Derrite said. “She was the one who restrained the attacker and made sure that the knife was taken away from him. If it wasn’t for this teacher’s heroic action, this tragedy would certainly have been much greater,” he said.
(Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier in Rio de Janeiro and Eduardo Simões in Sao Paulo; Writing by Steven Grattan; Editing by Josie Kao)
