Reforma counted 25 attacks inside Mexican schools over 12 years, leaving 16 people dead, including two attackers. The tally came as President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government prepared a decree requiring digital platforms to detect, report and remove content that directly incites violence. Reforma’s figures aren’t an official government count, and its published version doesn’t list every case or state its exact criteria.
The toll in schools
Two adult former pupils attacked Secondary School No. 13 in Torreón on 1 October with bladed weapons. They killed a member of the school’s leadership and injured four people, Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said. It was the fourth attack inside a Mexican school in 2026.
On 30 September, a 13-year-old wounded four people with two knives at a secondary school in Querétaro. School staff restrained him. All four injured people were out of danger, Vanguardia reported. Querétaro’s chief prosecutor, Víctor Antonio De Jesús, said he would seek an attempted-murder charge, El País reported.
Staff and residents intervened in both recent attacks. They held the attackers until police arrived, limiting the harm. The reported incidents put school employees and nearby residents directly in the response to violence before police reached the scene.
Most attacks in Reforma’s count targeted teachers or school heads rather than pupils. The review covered weapons ranging from assault rifles to knives, machetes and homemade explosives. Vanguardia republished the count on Saturday, 3 October.
El Universal published a narrower list, republished by Vanguardia on 1 October, identifying at least five deadly attacks since 2017, with eight deaths in total. In January 2017, a 16-year-old opened fire in a Monterrey classroom, killing a teacher and himself. In January 2020, an 11-year-old in Torreón shot and killed a teacher, wounded six people and killed himself.
On 22 September 2025, a 19-year-old fatally stabbed a 16-year-old at CCH Sur, a high school of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). El País reported that he had been active in misogynist “incel” internet forums. El Universal reported that a 15-year-old shot and killed a teacher and a school worker in Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán, on 24 March 2026; Reforma placed that attack in April.
Platforms and state authority
Sheinbaum announced on Friday, 2 October, that a working group led by the Consejería Jurídica, the presidency’s legal counsel, would prepare the government’s response. The group includes the Security Ministry, the Education Ministry (SEP), the National Intelligence Centre (CNI), Mexico’s civilian intelligence service, and the Agency for Digital Transformation and Telecommunications, which oversees government digital policy.
“There is a part that is the responsibility of the digital platforms,” Sheinbaum said at a morning press conference, according to Contralínea. The proposed decree would require social networks and other digital platforms to detect, report and remove content that directly incites violence. It would also establish channels for coordination with authorities.
García Harfuch said platforms should detect, report and remove content promptly. Education Minister Mario Delgado said officials hoped to have a draft ready the following week. “They have to show us that they are safe places for minors,” Delgado said in an Education Ministry statement. He asked how platforms with extensive artificial intelligence and user data couldn’t identify such posts in time.
Sheinbaum said investigators had found similarities between the Torreón attack, the recent Querétaro case and other attacks involving contact through social networks. She gave no further details about the Querétaro case or how the attackers had been in contact online. Experts from UNAM and the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) would help define what content must be removed, she said, adding that the work should proceed without haste to avoid censorship.
Prevention and unresolved rules
The government said it aimed to prevent violence, not create a new crime; the obligations described so far apply to platforms, not individual users. García Harfuch said officials had stepped up intelligence monitoring of social networks, messaging services and forums. He also said viewing certain content or posting an opinion doesn’t, by itself, mean someone will commit a crime.
The government plans to expand its “ABC of Emotions” programme with parent meetings, confidential reporting boxes in schools and guidance for teenagers. Reforma noted the wellbeing programme had begun five months earlier, yet the Torreón attack still followed. A year after the CCH Sur attack, students said UNAM’s psychological support plan had lost momentum, the paper added. The school programme was also described as “ABC de las Emociones,” a wellbeing programme for people aged 14 to 18.
Canal N said the proposal resembles rules adopted in the European Union, the United Kingdom, Australia and Brazil. Delgado also pointed to measures abroad that limit minors’ access to platforms. No draft decree has been published. The definition of content that “directly incites violence,” possible sanctions and the enforcing authority remain unknown, as does how far an executive decree could bind global companies without a law passed by Congress. Officials haven’t given a publication or entry-into-force date, and they haven’t set out how they’ll track school attacks in future.