2022 Aracruz School Shootings

On November 25, 2022, Gabriel Rodrigues Castiglioni (16) attacked two schools in Aracruz, Espírito Santo, Brazil, killing four people and wounding eleven. He attacked Escola Estadual Primo Bitti first and then Escola Praia de Coqueiral, wearing military-style camouflage, a bulletproof vest, a skull mask associated with Atomwaffen Division, and a homemade swastika armband. The attack was attributed in the prosecution of Terrorgram Collective leader Dallas Humber to her guidance: approximately one month before the attack, Humber and co-leader Matthew Robert Allison discussed a Brazilian contact planning "a racially motivated school attack in Brazil" in a secret Telegram chat, and Humber subsequently created Terrorgram "saint cards" for Castiglioni, characterizing him as "her kid." The Aracruz shootings are listed as the most lethal Terrorgram-attributed attack in Humber's sentencing documents and as one of the attacks Matthew Althorpe's publications helped inspire in his Canadian sentencing (March 27, 2026).¹

The Attacks

Castiglioni struck Escola Estadual Primo Bitti first during school hours on November 25, 2022. The four people killed were: Selena Zagrillo (12), a student who was shot while hiding under a desk; Maria da Penha Pereira de Melo Banhos (48), a teacher who was attempting to shield students; Cybelle Passos Bezerra Lara (45); and Flavia Amoss Merçon Leonardo (38). Eleven additional people were wounded across both school sites. Castiglioni was apprehended at or near the scene.

Terrorgram Attribution

The DOJ's case against Humber established the specific mechanism of Terrorgram's involvement. Court documents confirmed that in a secret Telegram channel on approximately October 23, 2022, Humber and Allison discussed a Brazilian contact's planned attack. The one-month gap between that conversation and the Aracruz shootings aligns with the attack date, and prosecutors attributed the event to Humber's guidance. Humber's post-attack creation of saint cards for Castiglioni - and her affectionate description of him as "her kid" - confirmed the relationship was not purely passive circulation of ideology but active mentorship of the kind Humber had also maintained with the Bratislava and other attackers.

This attribution placed the Aracruz attack within Terrorgram's documented operational pattern: the network maintained direct contact with individuals planning attacks, produced saint cards celebrating completed attacks, and used those cards to inspire the next attack.²

Prosecutions and Sentences

Brazilian courts sentenced Castiglioni to three years in juvenile detention in December 2022. He was released on supervised release by November 2025. No additional proceedings were reported following his completion of the sentence.

Humber was sentenced to 30 years in U.S. federal prison on December 19, 2025, with the Aracruz attack explicitly listed as one of seven attacks or plots linked to her leadership. Althorpe received 20 years in Canadian federal prison on March 27, 2026, with the attack similarly cited in his agreed statement of facts.¹

Terrorgram Propagation

On approximately November 27, 2022, two days after the attack, an unidentified Terrorgram Collective member using the pseudonym "Wolf Boy Winter" posted a video still from Escola Estadual Primo Bitti attack surveillance footage to a high-traffic Terrorgram channel. The same individual contributed multiple pages to "The Hard Reset," one of the network's primary propaganda publications, which the US Department of Justice later cited in the indictment of Dallas Humber and Matthew Robert Allison as a document created as part of a conspiracy to "recruit, radicalize, equip, advise, inspire and solicit others to commit attacks." In this way the Aracruz attack was immediately incorporated into Terrorgram's saint-documentation and propaganda pipeline, with attack footage transformed into promotional content within 48 hours.³

Brazilian Investigative Response

The Espírito Santo federal court was the first Brazilian institution to take direct legal action against the platform infrastructure. On April 26, 2023, Federal Judge Wellington Lopes da Silva of Espírito Santo ordered a nationwide suspension of Telegram after the platform failed to provide authorities with subscriber data from two neo-Nazi channels: the "Brazilian Anti-Semitic Movement" (Movimento Antissemitico Brasileiro) and the "Anti-Semitic Front" (Frente Antissemitica). Both channels had been recovered from the phone of the Aracruz perpetrator or a subsequent school-attack suspect, and contained what prosecutors described as murder tutorials, bomb-manufacturing instructions, and violent videos in addition to Nazi content. Judge da Silva ordered Google and Apple to remove Telegram from their app stores and directed mobile carriers to block access; Telegram was simultaneously fined approximately R$1 million (approximately US$198,000) per day until it complied. The suspension was lifted on April 28, 2023, after Telegram provided partial data.⁴

Michele Prado and ABIN Reporting

In 2023, Michele Prado, founder of the Brazilian NGO Stop Hate Brasil, submitted a formal report to ABIN (Agência Brasileira de Inteligência) and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security identifying Telegram channels linked to Terrorgram members operating in Brazil, including a channel associated with the "Wolf Boy Winter" pseudonym. Prado had been monitoring Terrorgram's Brazilian operations since at least 2022 and by 2023 documented more than 40 school-related violent incidents with some connection to online extremist networks over a three-year span. At least two of the Terrorgram-affiliated groups she identified had been created by adolescents.⁵

Federal Police Statistics

The Federal Police (Polícia Federal) recorded a 279% increase in investigations of Nazi propaganda on social media platforms from 2022 to 2023, making 2023 the highest year on record for such inquiries. A broader government accounting reported 2,830 ongoing investigations into school violence by June 2023, with over 380 arrests by that date. A GNET analysis published in November 2024 documented 177 Federal Police investigations into Nazi propaganda on social media platforms between January 2021 and February 2024, with 82 still ongoing at that date.⁵⁶

Ciro Daniel Amorim Ferreira

On January 13, 2025, the US State Department designated Ciro Daniel Amorim Ferreira of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in connection with his role as a Terrorgram channel administrator. Ferreira is the only Brazilian national publicly designated in connection with the Terrorgram Collective. The designation did not specifically allege direct contact between Ferreira and Castiglioni; the direct contact with the Aracruz perpetrator was documented through the Humber prosecution rather than through the Ferreira designation. The US government's naming of a Brazilian administrator confirms that the Terrorgram network had established domestic Brazilian infrastructure, not merely international reach into Brazil.⁷