Hatchet-Weidling Maniac Storms Brazilian Pre-School. Kills 4 Children

A 25-year-old man burst into a preschool in southern Brazil and killed four children with a hatchet-like weapon Wednesday before turning himself in to police, an attack President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva condemned as “monstrous.”

The attacker, who jumped a wall to get inside, also wounded four other children at the private preschool, known as the Good Shepherd Center, in the city of Blumenau, said police and government officials in the state of Santa Catarina.

He then rode a motorcycle to a state police station and handed himself in, police said.

Dozens of people gathered outside the preschool, whose external wall is covered in bright paintings of children and butterflies, said an AFP journalist at the scene.

Emergency workers and police had set up a security cordon, and were only allowing parents inside.

One parent outside was Bruno Bridi, the grief-stricken father of five-year-old Bernardo, who was killed.

Bridi told journalists how Bernardo and a friend had been hopping like bunnies when he dropped him off at school in the morning.

The wounded children — two girls, both aged five, and two boys, ages three and five — were in stable condition, said the hospital treating them.