15-year-old student shot dead classmate inside a school in San Cristóbal, Santa Fe

A teenager entered School No. 40 "Mariano Moreno" armed with a shotgun hidden in a guitar case and opened fire during the raising of the flag. The fatal victim was 13 years old. Eight other students were injured. The attacker was arrested. The Argentine educational community demands answers.

On Monday, March 30, 2026, at 7:14 a.m., the school routine of School No. 40 201cMariano Moreno201d in San Cristóbal – the capital town of the department of the same name, located 179 kilometers north of the capital of Santa Fe – was interrupted in a brutal and unprecedented way in the recent history of Argentina.

The high school students were lined up in the internal courtyard of the establishment, waiting for the hoisting of the national flag that begins the school day, when one of them – a 15-year-old student in his third year – pulled out a shotgun hidden inside a guitar case and began shooting at his classmates.

In desperation, students began to run in all directions. Several broke glass when jumping out of windows to escape, which generated polytrauma and cuts in a significant number of students, as confirmed by the director of the local hospital. Cellphones captured the first videos that showed the stampede in the yard.

A 13-year-old student was hit by the shots and died at the scene. The corresponding forensic experts of the Scientific Police prevented the transfer of his body to the hospital until the forensic work at the scene of the crime was concluded. Two other students – 13 and 15 years old respectively – were hit by pellets: one was sent in code red to the city of Rafaela with impacts to the face and neck, while the other had less serious injuries. In total, eight students were injured as a result of the attack.

It was the intervention of a school assistant – also described as a preceptor in some testimonies – that prevented a tragedy of greater proportions. According to official and witness accounts, the personnel pounced on the aggressor, grabbed him by the neck and managed to take the shotgun from him after he fired between four and five shots.

After being subdued, the aggressor was arrested by members of the Santa Fe Police and placed at the disposal of the provincial Justice. Minutes after the fact, the school was completely evacuated and the area was cordoned off for investigative tasks. The regional prosecutor of Rafaela, Carlos Vottero, is in charge of the investigation.

One of the elements that most shocked the educational community and the authorities was the absence of a history of violence or disturbing behavior in the attacker's record. Teachers and directors of the establishment agreed that the young man was a "good student" with no behavioral problems recorded.

According to reports, when he was apprehended, the teenager would have begun to laugh and said that he wanted to kill the entire school, according to LA NACION. As for the motives for the attack, as of press time the authorities had not been able to publicly determine the causes that triggered it. The identity of the aggressor is kept confidential because he is a minor.

The deceased student was 13 years old and was in his first year at the same institution. As confirmed by the Secretary of the Municipal Government, the victim's family has a long history of links with the local administration of San Cristóbal: the father, aunt and grandfather of the young man would have been or are municipal employees.

The sports club to which the victim belonged issued a statement on social networks to express its condolences and repudiate the attack. The community of San Cristóbal — a city of about 15,000 people where, as one local journalist described, "we all know each other" — was plunged into a deep state of shock and mourning.

The magnitude of the event triggered an immediate response from the provincial State. The governor of Santa Fe, Maximiliano Pullaro, appeared at the school to take a state of affairs and supervise containment actions. Along with him, several members of the provincial cabinet traveled to the place.

•        Pablo Cococcioni — Minister of Justice and Security

•        José Goity — Minister of Education

•        María Victoria Tejeda — Minister of Equality and Human Development

•        Daniela León — Secretariat for Children, Adolescents and Family

The Municipality of San Cristóbal decreed a holiday and mourning, suspending all activities scheduled for the week. The Mental Health teams of the province provided interdisciplinary support to both the injured and their families in the health centers of the region. At 11:00, Ministers Cococcioni, Goity and Tejeda held a press conference together with Prosecutor Vottero to report on the start of the investigation.

The attack in San Cristóbal immediately brought to the Argentine collective memory the most tragic case of school violence recorded in the country: the massacre of Carmen de Patagones, which occurred on September 28, 2004. On that occasion, Rafael Solich, 15 years old — nicknamed "Junior" — took out a firearm in the classroom and shot at his classmates, killing three teenagers and wounding five others. Solich was declared not chargeable.

Just as in that episode the aggressor was also 15 years old and had no known history of violence, the event in San Cristóbal renews the debate on the mechanisms of early detection of risk in Argentine educational institutions, the access of minors to firearms and school safety protocols.

The shooting at School No. 40 once again places questions on the Argentine public agenda that have no simple answers: how could a minor enter an educational establishment with a firearm without being detected? Were there warning signs that were not noticed by the aggressor's entourage? Are the protocols of emotional containment and school coexistence in force sufficient?

Experts in education and mental health point out that, although episodes of school violence of this severity are exceptional in Argentina, their recurrence—although spaced out over time—forces us to rethink the model of security in schools, the training of guidance teams, and the articulation with the mental health system. The absence of previous signs in the aggressor's behavior, reported by his own teachers, further complicates the analysis.

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Last updated: March 30, 2026, 12:40 PM (UTC-3)

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