Two Former Students Killed a Deputy Principal in Torreon With Machetes. Now Mexico Is Asking About the Videos.

A public secondary school in northern Mexico went from the routine of a Thursday morning to barricaded classrooms in the space of one class change. Two former students walked in through the main entrance carrying machetes, set off firecrackers to drive people into panic, and killed the school's deputy principal. Four other people were wounded, two of them seriously — and the two attackers were subdued not by police but by the neighbours of the farming settlement that surrounds the school.

Two Former Students Killed a Deputy Principal in Torreón With Machetes. Now Mexico Is Asking About the Videos.

Torreón, Coahuila — Coahuila's attorney general says he holds video proving that only two people walked through the main door of the Escuela Secundaria General No. 13. That fact matters, because almost everything else about the attack of 1 October is still being argued over.

A Warning, Then a Rush for the Classrooms

The attack began at about 8:45 in the morning at the secondary school in the ejido of La Unión, a communal farming settlement of roughly 3,600 people on the northern edge of Torreón, an industrial city of more than 700,000 in the state of Coahuila. It came during the change between the second and third lessons of the day.

A pupil who witnessed it described the sequence to local media: a firecracker went off, the intruders shouted "¡primer aviso!" — first warning — and then "Vamos por todas las mujeres". We are going for all the women. Students ran for the classrooms and pushed chairs and desks against the doors. The school prefect, Héctor Rodríguez, said the explosions began in a bathroom and that the attackers had come in behind a teacher.

Enrolment at the school is 210 pupils. About 170 were present that day, because rain had kept some at home. The state attorney general, Federico Fernández Montañez, said the bladed weapons and the firecrackers were used deliberately "to provoke panic, fear and distraction".

Two Former Students, Blades and Firecrackers

The two detained are 18-year-old twin brothers, adults under Mexican law, former students of the same school and residents of the same ejido. Neighbours in La Unión know them simply as "Los Cuates" — the twins. Local press has named them as Carlos and David; prosecutors have not published their names.

El Milenio reported that the brothers were rarely seen on the streets of the settlement and, according to neighbours and former classmates, hardly mixed with other young people. They were always together.

The attorney general ruled out the two things that dominated the first hours of speculation. There were no firearms. There were no real explosives. The bangs that people took for gunfire were firecrackers, he said, and he declined to use the word "explosivos" even though video of the attack records several detonations.

El Siglo de Torreón reported the items secured in the investigation: knives, a machete, a hammer, firecrackers and rat poison. Fernández Montañez said he had video showing that the two brothers were the only people who entered the school, and that they came through the main door — an answer to social media claims of up to five attackers.

The Deputy Principal Who Did Not Get Out

The woman killed was the school's deputy principal, aged 56. La Jornada and El Universal name her as Nery Edith Nevárez González; El Siglo de Torreón renders the name Nedi Edith Nevárez González. The attorney general confirmed she died of injuries caused by a bladed weapon. A necropsy reported by El Siglo de Torreón concluded the cause was hypovolemic shock.

One widely circulated detail is not established. N+ published an account in which the deputy principal tried to stop the attackers at the entrance and was the first person struck. No official statement has confirmed that sequence, and Infobae said so explicitly.

The official account is narrower: in the first phase of the attack the brothers went at the school's administrative staff, and the deputy principal was killed there. Forensic examinations are still expected to establish the precise mechanics and the exact cause of death.

Candles, flowers and photographs were placed against the school fence through the day. Another school where she had taught, Secundaria General No. 3 "Moisés Sáenz Garza", published a death notice crediting her teaching career.

What the Prosecutor Says the Motive Was

Fernández Montañez has been careful with the word motive, and it is worth holding that care. What he has offered is preliminary. He called the attack "una agresión brutal". He said the first line of investigation is "un tema de sentimientos contra el plantel" — a matter of feelings against the school. He also said the definitive motive must be established by ministerial investigation and forensics, and he did not present the resentment account as a conclusion.

He ruled out a targeted attack. "No fue un ataque dirigido," he said. The school was chosen, on the first evidence, for two reasons: it was close to the brothers' home and they knew the building because they had studied there. The first data, he said, indicate they began "atacar a quien pudieran de la institución. No había motivos" — attacking whoever they could. He said there was no sign of narcotics, alcohol or other intoxicants.

He described a broken family context. El Heraldo de México reported that, according to the prosecutor, the brothers had recently left a rehabilitation centre.

The Videos Nobody Has Authenticated

What has driven the national attention is not the machetes. It is the phones.

El Universal reported a TikTok post attributed to one of the attackers, captioned "Ya me toca a mí" — it's my turn now — posted on 30 September, the day before the attack. The account it named was "user804248814011". The post showed clothing, bladed weapons and what it described as the firecrackers to be used. The trainers, trousers and hoodie match what one of the attackers was wearing, and the devices match items found in a backpack and at the scene, according to photographs circulating afterwards. It also carried an anti-women symbol, consistent with what a pupil says was shouted inside the school.

El Siglo de Torreón reported a second attributed caption: "Mañana será mi retribución" — tomorrow will be my retribution.

The authorities have not authenticated either account, or confirmed it belongs to either detainee. That caveat is not a formality. It is the difference between a criminal case and a news cycle.

The Neighbours Who Made the Arrest

The arrest was made by the community. Residents heard the detonations, took them at first for fireworks, then heard screaming, and came to the school.

"Aquí, aquí, en todo esto, todos los correteamos. En todo el patio de la escuela," one resident told La Jornada. We chased them all through the schoolyard. Another, María Guadalupe Altamira, told El Universal: "Los correteamos por estos pasillos. La gente les pegaba. Traían machetes, cuchillos y eran dos muchachitos, son de La Unión, de aquí mismo." We chased them down these corridors. People hit them. They were carrying machetes and knives, and they were two boys, from La Unión, from right here.

The residents overpowered the brothers and handed them to police. Municipal and state police, the army, the National Guard and the Grupo de Reacción Torreón deployed to the school, with forensic examiners who secured the perimeter and processed the scene. Parents gathered outside looking for their children.

The wider investigation is looking outward: the attorney general said the Fiscalía is coordinating with federal intelligence agencies on whether people in other states were following the brothers, and their electronic devices have been seized.

Mexico's Short, Painful Ledger of School Attacks

Reuters called Thursday's attack "a rare case of school violence in the country". Rare is accurate. Unprecedented is not.

On 10 January 2020 an 11-year-old boy walked into the private Colegio Cervantes in Torreón with two guns. He killed his teacher, wounded five classmates and a sports teacher, and then shot himself. Reporting at the time said the boy was wearing clothing that referenced Eric Harris, one of the two students behind the Columbine massacre in Colorado on 20 April 1999. El Siglo de Torreón has reported that the brothers in this week's attack allegedly wore T-shirts carrying images of Harris and Dylan Klebold, the other Columbine attacker — a detail the Fiscalía says it must still verify, and one the attorney general has not confirmed.

In March this year a teenage boy allegedly shot dead two female teachers at a high school in Lázaro Cárdenas, on the Michoacán coast. On 26 September two state university high-school students were shot dead in Cuernavaca. Local reporting notes that Torreón had been logging threats of shootings at secondary schools and university faculties since March, which had already prompted preventive security operations.

Sheinbaum's Answer: A Decree for the Platforms

President Claudia Sheinbaum addressed the attack at her Friday morning press conference, held on the 58th anniversary of the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre of students. She opened on Tlatelolco — "Octubre 2 no se olvida" — and named former president Gustavo Díaz Ordaz as the person primarily responsible, a finding her administration published in the Official Gazette. Then she turned to Coahuila.

"Ayer se presentó una situación muy lamentable en una escuela de Coahuila, unos jóvenes que atacaron a una maestra," she said. She said there have been three or four similar episodes in the country in recent years.

Her answer is a platforms decree. Sheinbaum announced a working group whose first priority is to demand that social media companies remove content promoting violence, abuse or harassment, and called on parents to watch what their children see online. Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said the group includes his ministry, the Public Education Ministry and the Digital Transformation Agency, with academics from UNAM and the National Polytechnic Institute, and is led by Luisa María Alcalde, the president's chief legal adviser. "Next week we expect to work on a decree that establishes obligations for digital platforms regarding the detection, reporting and timely removal of content and comments that directly incite violence," he said. Sheinbaum said mental-health funding would be increased by whatever is needed.

What Sunday's Hearing Has to Establish

The brothers remained in the custody of the Fiscalía General del Estado on Friday. No judge has yet ruled on their legal situation.

Vanguardia reported that the offences the prosecutor expects to bring — homicide and injuries that put life at risk — could carry 50 to 60 years in prison. Infobae put the exposure at more than 50 years.

The initial hearing is expected on Sunday 4 October. Fernández Montañez told Multimedios Laguna's Telediario Matutino that the Ministerio Público would request the hearing then, "y que todo el peso de la ley pueda caer sobre ellos". The judge will decide whether there is enough evidence to send the case to trial.

Several things remain explicitly unestablished. No foreign attack or group has been named by prosecutors as the inspiration for the two brothers, whatever their phones may eventually show. No link to organised crime has been reported. The attorney general said there was no sign of a comparable risk to other schools in Coahuila — a statement that will be tested by how the next school week in the municipality passes.

What La Unión Is Left Holding

The school remained under guard through Friday while examiners worked through the grounds, and some schools in Torreón announced they were suspending activities. There was no official notice from the state education ministry.

Governor Manolo Jiménez Salinas offered his condolences and said the investigation would go "hasta las últimas consecuencias". Torreón's mayor, Miguel Ángel Riquelme Solís, expressed solidarity with students, teachers and parents. The federal education ministry, the SEP, called the events "reprobables" and offered the school community institutional support. Section 35 of the SNTE, the teachers' union, issued an urgent appeal for blood donors for a wounded teacher and a pupil at the Sanatorio Español.

What La Unión is left holding is the thing that does not fit: a small settlement where the adults who heard the firecrackers ran toward the school instead of away from it, and where the two people now accused of the worst violence the community can remember were the twins everyone knew by sight.

This article was produced with AI-assisted research and editorial support. Sources: La Jornada, El Universal, El Siglo de Torreón, Mexico News Daily, Rio Times, El Heraldo de México, Infobae, El Milenio, Vanguardia, El Financiero, N+ and Reuters wire copy.

By Jessica Ali, Staff Writer