Brazil wonders why after school shooters kill 8, themselves

SUZANO (AP) — A Sao Paulo suburb prepared to bury its dead Thursday while looking for reasons why two masked former students armed with a hand gun, knives, axes and crossbows killed five teenagers and two adults at a school before killing themselves as police closed in.

Authorities said the pair also fatally shot the owner of a used car business nearby before launching the attack Wednesday on the Professor Raul Brasil school in Suzano, a suburb of Brazil’s largest city.

Brazil has the largest number of annual homicides in the world, but school shootings are rare. In 2011, 12 students were killed by a gunman who roamed the halls of a school in Rio de Janeiro.

Besides the five students killed Wednesday, the dead included a teacher and a school administrator, said Joao Camilo Pires de Campos, the state’s public secretary. Nine others were wounded in the school attack, he said.

“This is the saddest day of my life,” De Campos told reporters outside the school in the Sao Paulo suburb of Suzano.

The dead students were to be buried Thursday.

Authorities identified the attackers as 17-year-old Guilherme Taucci Monteiro and 25-year-old Henrique de Castro.

“The big question is: What was the motivation of these former students?” De Campos said.