MEXICO CITY, Oct 1 (Reuters) – An attack at a secondary school in Mexico’s northern Coahuila state left a vice principal dead and three people injured on Thursday, local authorities said, in a rare case of school violence in the country.
The attack was allegedly carried out by two 18-year-old brothers who have both been detained, State Prosecutor Federico Fernandez said, and took place at Secondary School No. 13 in the La Union area of the city of Torreon. The suspects were former students, according to a state government official.
According to reports in local media, the two alleged attackers entered the school armed with machetes and rudimentary explosive devices. The two alleged attackers were apprehended by local neighbors who entered the school upon hearing detonations and held the suspects until authorities arrived at the scene, a neighborhood resident told local media.
“Preliminary investigations indicate that two people, who are the probable perpetrators, attacked administrative staff. A woman, the school’s vice principal, lost her life,” Fernandez told reporters. He described the incident as a “brutal attack.”
The federal Security Cabinet said the three people injured were receiving medical attention.
Attacks on schools are unusual in Mexico, where most violence is tied to organized crime, but there have been several high-profile cases in recent years.
In March this year, a 15-year-old was arrested after reportedly shooting and killing two female staff members at a private school in Mexico’s western state of Michoacan.
An attack also took place at a private school in Torreon in January 2020, when an 11-year-old boy shot a teacher dead and wounded five classmates before taking his own life, officials said at the time.
In 2017, a 15-year-old student in the northern city of Monterrey shot and wounded a teacher and three classmates at a private school before turning the gun on himself. The teacher died in hospital two months later.
(Reporting by Raúl Cortés Fernández, Editing by Iñigo Alexander)
