Gunman Kills 4, Then Himself, After Mass at Brazil Cathedral

No motive identified in Campinas shooting
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Dec 12, 2018 12:11 AM CST
Gunman Kills 4, Then Himself, After Mass at Brazil Cathedral
People stand outside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Campinas, Brazil, Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2018.   (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

A man opened fire in a cathedral in southern Brazil after Mass on Tuesday, killing four people and wounding four more before taking a bullet in the ribs in a firefight with police and then shooting himself in the head, authorities say. The shooting happened right after the midday service had ended at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Campinas, a city about 60 miles north of Sao Paulo, the AP reports. "It's so sad," said Wilson Cassante, a press officer with the archdiocese. "It's hard to imagine the pain this has caused." Hours after paramedics were seen taking bodies and injured people out of the church, authorities identified the shooter as 49-year-old Euler Fernando Grandolpho.

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. A backpack found near the dead gunman had his identification but no note or other clues to a motive, police investigator Jose Henrique Ventura told reporters outside the church. "Thanks to the intervention of police, something much bigger was avoided," Ventura said, adding that the four injured were in stable condition. Police investigator Hamilton Caviola Filho said surveillance footage shows that the shooter "came into the church, sat on a pew, with time to think, and then got up and starting shooting."

(More Brazil stories.)

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