Gunman kills 3 people in southern Brazil during hours-long shootout

RIO DE JANEIRO — A 45-year-old man in southern Brazil barricaded himself in a house and killed his father, brother and a police officer in an hours-long shootout before he himself was fatally shot, authorities said Wednesday. Nine other people were injured.

The incident in Novo Hamburgo, part of the metro area of Rio Grande do Sul state’s capital Porto Alegre, started late Tuesday when the man’s father called the police to report his son’s aggressive behavior, authorities said at a news conference in Porto Alegre.

When police arrived, the son started firing, hitting officers in the process. The confrontation lasted almost 10 hours, dragging into the next morning, state military police said in a statement issued later in the day.

The injured included six military police officers, a municipal guard and the man’s mother and sister-in-law, the police statement said.

When special operations battalion officers managed to enter the house in the morning, they found the man dead, the statement added.

Gov. Eduardo Leite said on X that police killed the shooter, without providing details, although officials at the news conference in Porto Alegre said it was unclear whether police shot the man or whether he killed himself.

The gunman, a truck driver, killed military police officer Everton Kirsch Júnior, 31, who leaves behind a baby born 45 days ago, Leite said.

Both the shooter and his father had a history of schizophrenia, Fernando Antônio Sodré de Oliveira, head of Rio Grande do Sul's civil police, said at the news conference.

“It was a war scenario. He had plenty of ammunition, two pistols ... and two more rifles, and he was shooting at the police officers the whole time,” de Oliveira said.

Four weapons were registered in the gunman’s name, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in a statement on X on Wednesday. He also reiterated his prior calls for stricter control of access to firearms.

“This cannot be normalized: the indiscriminate distribution of weapons in society, with many of them falling into the hands of criminals, is unacceptable,” Lula said, and expressed his solidarity with the victims and the affected community.

Former President Jair Bolsonaro, who was in power between 2019 and 2022, loosened rules on ownership of guns and ammunition, arguing that people should be entitled to protect their families and assets.

In July 2023, Lula, a leftist, signed a decree tightening restrictions on civilian access to guns, in a move aimed at reversing Bolsonaro’s pro-firearms policies. The move followed a rash of school shootings in a country where they are historically uncommon.