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The_Info_Web/40 - EVENTS/2022 Aracruz School Shootings.md

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category tags date location created updated summary relations
Terrorism
Event
TerrorgramCollective
NeoNazi
Accelerationism
Brazil
SaintsCulture
MassShooter
2022-11-25 Aracruz, Espírito Santo, Brazil 2026-05-21 2026-10-05 On November 25, 2022, 16-year-old Gabriel Rodrigues Castiglioni shot people at two Aracruz, Brazil schools wearing a swastika armband, killing four and wounding twelve; U.S. prosecutors list the attack among those guided by Dallas Humber.
type with reverse start role fn
participant_in Gabriel Rodrigues Castiglioni true 2022-11-25 Perpetrator 1

On November 25, 2022, Gabriel Rodrigues Castiglioni, 16, attacked the Escola Estadual Primo Bitti and then the Centro Educacional Praia de Coqueiral in the Coqueiral district of Aracruz, Espírito Santo, Brazil, with a .40 pistol issued to his father by the Polícia Militar do Espírito Santo and a .38 revolver his father had bought privately. Three teachers and a 12-year-old student were killed and twelve people were wounded.12 He wore camouflage clothing, a hat, a vest and a mask, with a swastika armband that Governor Renato Casagrande confirmed as a Nazi symbol; Agência Brasil described the mask as a skeleton face similar to the one worn in photographs by one of the perpetrators of the 2019 Suzano school shooting.3 The government's sentencing memorandum against Terrorgram Collective leader Dallas Humber lists "G.C." among seven people who plotted or committed attacks "inspired and guided by her leadership."4

The Attacks

According to the reconstruction given by police delegate André Jaretta on November 28, 2022, the teenager took the family car with its license plate covered while his parents were shopping, entered Primo Bitti, a school he had attended until June 2022, by a rear gate whose padlock he cut, and fired into the teachers' room, reloading once. He then drove to the Centro Educacional Praia de Coqueiral, a private school, and fired a revolver at students in the entrance hall and through a window into an upper-floor classroom, before returning home and putting away the clothing and weapons.5 The attack began at about 9:30 in the morning.3 He was apprehended at about 2:10 in the afternoon at a family beach house, the Polícia Civil do Espírito Santo said.6

The dead were the teachers Maria da Penha Pereira de Melo Banhos (48) and Cybelle Passos Bezerra Lara (45), killed at Primo Bitti; the teacher Flávia Amboss Merçon Leonardo, who died in hospital on November 26 (outlets give her age as 36 and 38); and Selena Sagrillo Zuccolotto, 12, a sixth-grader at the private school.17 Police charged him with acts analogous to qualified homicide and attempted homicide; he confessed after being shown surveillance footage.58

Terrorgram and the United States Record

The government's sentencing memorandum in United States v. Humber (November 26, 2025) lists "G.C. shot eleven people, killing four, at two schools in Aracruz, Brazil" among attacks "inspired and guided by her leadership," and says it would file under seal the "Saint cards" Humber created to commemorate the shootings by J.K. (Juraj Krajčík, Bratislava) and G.C., "whom she considers 'symbolically [her] kids.'"4 Raw Story reported in March 2025 that a government filing opposing bail for Matthew Robert Allison described a secret chat of October 23, 2022 in which Humber told Allison she "had direct messages with a Terrorgram user who was planning to commit a racially motivated school shooting," with details matching the Aracruz attack a month later.9

ProPublica and FRONTLINE reported that after the attack Humber posted to a Terrorgram channel a ZIP file of information on it, including 17 photographs and four videos, said the massacre was motivated by "Hatred of non-Whites," and wrote that the assailant would get a "SLAP ON THE WRIST" sentence because of his age; they called it the most deadly known crime stemming from Terrorgram.10 At Humber's sentencing on December 17, 2025, prosecutor Christopher J. Perras told the court she "was responsible for inciting" the Bratislava shooting, a stabbing outside a mosque in Turkey "and a school shooting in Aracruz, Brazil that left teachers and children dead." She was sentenced to 360 months.1112

The researcher Michele Prado told Raw Story that a Terrorgram pseudonym, "Wolf Boy Winter," contributed pages to the Terrorgram zine The Hard Reset and interacted with Brazilian adolescents.9

Brazilian Proceedings

On December 7, 2022, Judge Felipe Leitão of the Vara da Infância e Juventude de Aracruz imposed the socio-educational measure of internment for up to three years, the maximum under the Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente, with psychiatric follow-up.13 He left internment in late November 2025; the Tribunal de Justiça do Espírito Santo told A Gazeta on December 2, 2025 that he continues under assisted liberty, and the Ministério Público do Espírito Santo said Brazilian law does not allow him to be held responsible again as an adult.1

The Polícia Militar opened a disciplinary procedure against his father, a lieutenant, on November 28, 2022, over how the son obtained the two weapons.5 In June 2025 victims and relatives circulated a petition stating that the father had "until today not been punished and has not even been located to be officially cited in the process."14 The state government compensated only those hurt at the state school Primo Bitti, under a 2023 plan modeled on São Paulo's after Suzano.15

Brazilian Investigative Response

The Polícia Federal found two antisemitic Telegram groups, "Movimento Anti-Semita Brasileiro" and "Frente Anti-Semita," on the phone seized from the teenager; PF delegate Leopoldo Soares Lacerda wrote that the minor "was inspired by the material shared on the application to commit the act of violent extremism."1617 Justice Minister Flávio Dino had ordered a PF inquiry into neo-Nazi organizations on April 5, 2023. The PF asked the federal court in Linhares on April 14, 2023 to break the groups' data; Telegram supplied administrator data for one channel and said the other had been deleted. On April 26, 2023, Federal Judge Wellington Lopes da Silva found the compliance partial, raised the daily fine to R$1 million and ordered Telegram suspended nationwide, directing Google and Apple to remove it from their app stores.1718 The suspension was lifted on April 28, 2023.19

On June 2, 2023 the PF executed search warrants in São Paulo and Petrolina, Pernambuco, in Operação Bedel, against two members of the group, investigated for corrupting a minor by inducing him to commit qualified homicide and an offense under the Anti-Terrorism Law; the PF wrote that "the use of the swastika on the minor's clothing at the time of the attack demonstrates the influence of Nazi ideology received from the application group."20

Michele Prado and ABIN Reporting

In 2023, Prado, founder of the Brazilian NGO Stop Hate Brasil, submitted a report to the Agência Brasileira de Inteligência (ABIN) and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security identifying Telegram channels linked to Terrorgram members operating in Brazil, including a channel associated with the "Wolf Boy Winter" pseudonym. Prado had been monitoring Terrorgram's Brazilian operations since at least 2022 and by 2023 documented more than 40 school-related violent incidents with some connection to online extremist networks over a three-year span. At least two of the Terrorgram-affiliated groups she identified had been created by adolescents.21

Federal Police Statistics

The Polícia Federal recorded a 279% increase in investigations of Nazi propaganda on social media platforms from 2022 to 2023, making 2023 the highest year on record for such inquiries. A broader government accounting reported 2,830 ongoing investigations into school violence by June 2023, with over 380 arrests by that date. A Global Network on Extremism and Technology analysis published in November 2024 documented 177 Federal Police investigations into Nazi propaganda on social media platforms between January 2021 and February 2024, with 82 still ongoing at that date.2122

Ciro Daniel Amorim Ferreira

On January 13, 2025, the United States Department of State designated Ciro Daniel Amorim Ferreira of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in connection with his role as a Terrorgram channel administrator.23

Footnotes

  1. Júlia Afonso, "Atirador em ataques a escolas de Aracruz é solto após três anos," A Gazeta, December 2, 2025. https://www.agazeta.com.br/es/policia/atirador-em-ataques-a-escolas-de-aracruz-e-solto-apos-tres-anos-1225 ↩︎

  2. "Autor de ataques em escolas de Aracruz é filho de PM e tinha suástica na roupa," O Tempo, November 25, 2022. https://www.otempo.com.br/brasil/autor-de-ataques-em-escolas-de-aracruz-e-filho-de-pm-e-tinha-suastica-na-roupa-1.2772415 ↩︎

  3. Léo Rodrigues, "ES: adolescente usa arma do pai e símbolo nazista em ataque a escolas," Agência Brasil, November 25, 2022. https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/geral/noticia/2022-11/es-adolescente-usa-arma-do-pai-e-simbolo-nazista-em-ataque-escolas ↩︎

  4. United States v. Humber, No. 2:24-cr-00257 (E.D. Cal.), ECF 90, "Formal PSR Objections and Sentencing Memorandum" by the United States, November 26, 2025. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.caed.452335/gov.uscourts.caed.452335.90.0.pdf ↩︎

  5. "PM instaura Processo Administrativo contra pai de assassino de Aracruz," Século Diário, November 28, 2022. https://www.seculodiario.com.br/seguranca/pm-instaura-processo-administrativo-contra-pai-de-assassino-de-aracruz/ ↩︎

  6. "Após atentado, atirador de Aracruz almoçou com os pais e foi para a praia," SBT News, November 28, 2022. https://sbtnews.sbt.com.br/noticia/brasil/231714-apos-atentado-atirador-de-aracruz-almocou-com-os-pais-e-foi-para-a-praia ↩︎

  7. "Ataques em escolas: saiba quem são as vítimas mortas em Aracruz," A Gazeta, November 26, 2022. https://www.agazeta.com.br/es/policia/ataques-em-escolas-saiba-quem-sao-as-vitimas-mortas-em-aracruz-1122 ↩︎

  8. "Polícia investiga se atirador de Aracruz tem ligação com grupos neonazistas," A Gazeta, November 26, 2022. https://www.agazeta.com.br/es/policia/policia-investiga-se-atirador-de-aracruz-tem-ligacao-com-grupos-neonazistas-1122 ↩︎

  9. "Terrorgram: Exporting Terrorism" (Raw Investigates), Raw Story, March 7, 2025. https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/terrorgram-terrorism/ ↩︎

  10. "The Rise and Fall of Terrorgram: Inside a Global Online Hate Network," ProPublica and PBS FRONTLINE, 2025. https://www.propublica.org/article/rise-and-fall-terrorgram-inside-global-online-hate-network-frontline-telegram ↩︎

  11. United States v. Humber, No. 2:24-cr-00257 (E.D. Cal.), ECF 111, Transcript of Judgment and Sentencing, December 17, 2025, pp. 30-31. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.caed.452335/gov.uscourts.caed.452335.111.0.pdf ↩︎

  12. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Public Affairs, "Leader of Transnational Terrorist Group Sentenced to 30 Years in Prison for Soliciting Hate Crimes and Murder, and Conspiring to Provide Material Support to Terrorists," December 17, 2025. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/leader-transnational-terrorist-group-sentenced-30-years-prison-soliciting-hate-crimes-and ↩︎

  13. Tribunal de Justiça do Espírito Santo, "Juiz de Aracruz conclui processo em relação ao autor dos ataques às duas escolas ocorrido no mês de novembro," December 7, 2022. https://www.tjes.jus.br/?p=157406 ↩︎

  14. "Vítimas de atentado de Aracruz mobilizam abaixo-assinado por justiça," Século Diário, June 11, 2025. https://www.seculodiario.com.br/seguranca/vitimas-de-atentado-de-aracruz-mobilizam-abaixo-assinado-por-justica/ ↩︎

  15. Fabiana Tostes, "Massacre de Aracruz: Governo do ES vai indenizar vítimas do ataque à escola estadual," Folha Vitória, 2023. https://www.folhavitoria.com.br/politica/massacre-de-aracruz-governo-do-es-vai-indenizar-vitimas-do-ataque-a-escola-estadual/ ↩︎

  16. "PF diz que post antissemita no Telegram influenciou ataque a escola em Aracruz," CartaCapital, April 27, 2023. https://www.cartacapital.com.br/cartaexpressa/pf-diz-que-publicacao-antissemita-no-telegram-influenciou-ataque-a-escola-em-aracruz/ ↩︎

  17. "Entenda por que juiz do ES mandou tirar Telegram do ar," A Gazeta, April 2023. https://www.agazeta.com.br/es/cotidiano/entenda-por-que-juiz-do-es-mandou-tirar-telegram-do-ar-0423 ↩︎

  18. "Justiça determina a suspensão do Telegram por não repassar dados à PF," Gazeta do Povo, April 2023. https://www.gazetadopovo.com.br/vida-e-cidadania/justica-determina-suspensao-do-telegram-no-brasil-por-nao-apresentar-dados-a-pf/ ↩︎

  19. France 24, "Brazil court suspends Telegram app in neo-Nazi probe," April 26, 2023. https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20230426-brazil-court-suspends-telegram-app-in-neo-nazi-probe; TechTimes, "Brazilian Court Orders Temporary Suspension for Telegram Over Neo-Nazi Groups," April 26, 2023. https://www.techtimes.com/articles/290845/20230426/brazilian-court-orders-temporary-suspension-telegram-over-neo-nazi-groups.htm ↩︎

  20. "PF cumpre mandados contra grupo neonazista ligado a assassino de Aracruz," A Gazeta, June 2, 2023. https://www.agazeta.com.br/es/policia/pf-cumpre-mandados-contra-grupo-neonazista-ligado-a-assassino-de-aracruz-0623 ↩︎

  21. Sofia Schurig, "Terrorgram and Youth Radicalisation: Understanding Brazil's Online Extremist Landscape," GNET, November 22, 2024. https://gnet-research.org/2024/11/22/terrorgram-and-youth-radicalisation-understanding-brazils-online-extremist-landscape/ ↩︎

  22. Rest of World (Matheus Andrade), "Research links school shootings with extremist online culture, gaming, and memes," 2023. https://restofworld.org/2023/online-extremism-linked-school-shootings-brazil/ ↩︎

  23. U.S. Department of State, "Terrorist Designations of The Terrorgram Collective and Three Leaders," January 13, 2025. https://2021-2025.state.gov/office-of-the-spokesperson/releases/2025/01/terrorist-designations-of-the-terrorgram-collective-and-three-leaders/; Federal Register Vol. 90, No. 10, Document 2025-00756, January 15, 2025. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/01/15/2025-00756/specially-designated-global-terrorist-designations-of-the-terrorgram-collective-ciro-daniel-amorim ↩︎