In Rare Mexico School Shooting, Student Kills a Teacher and Wounds Others

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MEXICO CITY — An 11-year-old boy wielding two guns opened fire in his private school in northern Mexico on Friday morning, killing a teacher and wounding at least six other people, before killing himself, officials said.

The wounded included one teacher and five students, Adelaido Flores, a regional public security coordinator in the northern border state of Coahuila, said in an interview with Milenio TV.

Officials said the boy had been a well-behaved student who earned good grades. But Coahuila’s governor, Miguel Ángel Riquelme, said at a news conference that the boy had given what now appears to have been an ominous signal of his plan.

“He told some of his classmates that ‘today is the day,’” the governor said.

Shortly after the boy uttered that phrase, the governor said, he asked permission to go to the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later, when the boy hadn’t returned to class, the teacher went looking for him and found the boy emerging from the bathroom with two guns, Mr. Riquelme said.

The boy then opened fire, killing the teacher and wounding the others, the governor said.

Mr. Riquelme speculated that the boy may have been influenced by a violent video game called Natural Selection. He had spoken about it with other students, and on Friday was wearing a shirt emblazoned with the game’s name.

“He had indeed mentioned the video game, which I believe he tried to recreate today,” the governor said.

The website for the game describes its latest iteration, Natural Selection 2, as “an immersive, multiplayer shooter that pits aliens against humans in a strategic and action-packed struggle for survival.” The game is manufactured by Unknown Worlds, a company based in San Francisco.

Unknown Worlds did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Jorge Zermeño, the mayor of the city of Torreón, where the shooting occurred, told reporters that the boy lived with his grandmother but suffered “some family trouble.”

As investigators swarmed the school Friday morning, officials offered no further information about the circumstances or possible motive.

While Mexico has suffered from endemic violence for years, school shootings are extremely rare.

In January 2017, a 15-year-old boy opened fire in a school in the northern city of Monterrey, wounding a teacher and several students, before shooting himself. The boy later died at the hospital, and the teacher died of her wounds two months later.

In May 2014, a 15-year-old boy shot a 13-year-old classmate in a classroom at their school in the State of Mexico. The victim died of his wounds the next day.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who recently completed his first year in office, has struggled to articulate a coherent crime-fighting strategy, and has failed to curb spiraling violence driven by organized crime groups.

He took office in December 2018 promising to remove the military from the streets in the fight against drug trafficking organizations and instead address the roots of crime by tackling poverty through social development programs and investment — a strategy he refers to as “hugs, not bullets.”

But in the first 11 months of last year, there were more than 31,000 homicides, with some experts predicting that the year-end total would set a record.



Source : Nytimes