{"id":25198,"date":"2018-12-12T01:23:19","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T01:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25198"},"modified":"2018-12-12T01:23:19","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T01:23:19","slug":"gunman-kills-four-worshippers-during-mass-at-brazil-cathedral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=25198","title":{"rendered":"Gunman kills four worshippers during Mass at Brazil cathedral"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A man opened fire in a cathedral in southern Brazil after Mass on Tuesday, killing four worshippers and wounding four more before taking a bullet in the ribs in a firefight with police and then shooting himself in the head, authorities said.<\/p>\n

The shooting happened right after the midday service had ended at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Campinas, a city about 100km north of Sao Paulo.<\/p>\n

“It’s so sad,” said Wilson Cassante, a press officer with the archdiocese. “It’s hard to imagine the pain this has caused.”<\/p>\n

Hours after paramedics were seen taking bodies and injured out of the church, authorities identified the shooter as 49-year-old Euler Fernando Grandolpho from Valinhos, a nearby city in the densely populated state of Sao Paulo.<\/p>\n

Grandolpho, a systems analyst, was not a member of the church, authorities said. According to public records, he had held various jobs with government entities, including a stint as an assistant to the prosecutor in the public ministry in Sao Paulo.<\/p>\n

Authorities said they had not determined a motive. A backpack found near the dead gunman had his identification but no note or other clues, police investigator Jose Henrique Ventura told reporters outside the church.<\/p>\n

“Thanks to the intervention of police, something much bigger was avoided,” Ventura said, adding that the four injured were in stable condition.<\/p>\n

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Police stand guard outside the Metropolitan Cathedral after a deadly shooting in Campinas [Victor R Caivano\/AP Photo]\u00a0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

‘I saw people getting shot’<\/h2>\n

Danielle Coutinho told EPTV that she was sitting in the church chatting after Mass when gunfire began. A man sitting close to her was shot as she and others ran.<\/p>\n

“I saw people getting shot. I can’t get it out of my head,” she said in tears. “It was horrible.”<\/p>\n

Brazil has long struggled with gun violence, and is routinely the world leader in total homicides, though mass shootings are rare. Last year, nearly 64,000 people were killed. Far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, a former army captain, campaigned on promises to crack down on violence, in part by loosening gun laws so more civilians could arm themselves.<\/p>\n

Hamilton Caviola Filho, a police investigator, told news portal G1 that authorities had reviewed surveillance footage from inside the cathedral.<\/p>\n

The shooter “came into the church, sat on a pew, with time to think, and then got up and starting shooting”,\u00a0Caviola Filho said.<\/p>\n

The investigator also said that before shooting himself in the head, the suspect took a bullet in the ribs from responding police. In total, the suspect fired at least 20 shots, Caviola Filho said.<\/p>\n

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People stand outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Campinas, Brazil [Victor R Caivano\/AP Photo]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Father Amaury Thomazi, who celebrated Mass before the shooting, posted a video recounting the chaos that followed the burst of gunfire.<\/p>\n

“Nobody could do anything or help in any way” to stop the rampage, Thomazi said. He called on people to pray for the dead, the injured and the shooter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man opened fire in a cathedral in southern Brazil after Mass on Tuesday, killing four worshippers and wounding four more before taking a bullet in the ribs in a firefight with police and then shooting himself in the head, authorities said. The shooting happened right after the midday service had ended at the Metropolitan…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":25199,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}