An assault rifle, a 15-year-old, and a trophy video: The tragedy that shattered Michoacán

The terror seemed endless. But the clock only registered 10 minutes. Between 7:30 and 7:40 a.m. On Tuesday, everything changed at the Antón Makarenko high school in Michoacán. In those 10 minutes, the lives of teachers María del Rosario and Tatiana were taken by the roar of 14 gunshots. In that brief moment, Osmer H, just 15 years old, fulfilled the threat he had made hours earlier in a video on social media, with a rifle in his hand and images linked to the extremist and misogynistic incel movement: “Today is the day.”

Initial reports from the Michoacán Attorney General’s Office paint a violent picture still tinged with uncertainty. The latest scene is the coastal municipality of Lázaro Cárdenas. The key to the still-developing and incomplete investigation is the school’s security camera footage. Osmer, dressed in black, enters the frame with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and opens fire on the teachers, who had the misfortune of being right at the entrance of the high school.

First, he shoots one of the teachers from behind. Then he opens fire on the other. She runs for her life and manages to hide behind a desk. Osmer approaches and coldly finishes her off. The magnitude of the tragedy was limited only by sheer luck. “He didn’t have any more magazines. He had more bullets, but no more magazines,” the state prosecutor, Carlos Torres Piña, told EL PAÍS. With no possibility of firing again, the young man remained there, like someone contemplating in shock, outside his still-developing body, a crime that has condemned him forever.

Police arrived minutes later, according to the Prosecutor’s Office. Once detained, he answered one of the many questions that have arisen since Tuesday morning: How can a teenager obtain a weapon designed for war? “I took it from the house,” he confessed to the officers. His stepfather, a member of the Mexican Navy, denied that it was his rifle.

For now, Michoacán authorities are not completely dismissing Osmer’s version of events. “We don’t know which family member he’s talking about,” Torres Piña maintains. Beyond any speculation, the undeniable fact is that the attacker posed with the AR-15 in front of his bedroom mirror hours before the shooting. In fact, in addition to intentional homicide, the Public Prosecutor’s Office is considering a charge of possession of weapons restricted to the military.

Doubts in the case

There are many pieces left to connect. Perhaps the most important is the reason why. Based on what the attacker posted on Instagram, he identifies with the incel community. He shared a post in which an armed individual declares: “I’ve decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, back to their creator. I hate feminists. In another, he highlights Charles Manson.

This profile, however, clashes with what the detainee’s high school has publicly stated in a press release. Osmer had no “internal issues that justify or are related to such a deplorable act as the one that occurred,” the school asserted. Initial interviews conducted by officers with teachers and classmates describe a “withdrawn” child who, apparently, was a victim of bullying. The Prosecutor’s Office hopes to clarify these questions once they access his phone.

When he entered the school intent on killing — it’s still unclear exactly who his intended targets were — the teenager didn’t have his cell phone with him. The boy’s mother has been key during the initial stages of the investigation, as the state prosecutor emphasized: “At least the mother has [been willing to cooperate].” She has also given the police permission to gather information inside the house and access the phone’s contents.

The double murder at the Anton Makarenko school brought to light familiar threats in Lázaro Cárdenas. Four months earlier, the community drew media attention after a 13-year-old boy posted a video on social media in which he encouraged his classmates to kill two of their teachers. The student, who attends Technical High School 12, very near Osmer’s high school, called for the same thing to be done “to all teachers and all schools.” The Attorney General’s Office has not yet established a connection between the two incidents. The state authorities’ investigation into the November case is still ongoing. However, the two teachers at that school have been placed under protection.

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