SAO PAULO, Brazil -- The gun was American, and the violent movie was, too.
A U.S.-made 9 mm submachine gun in hand, a 24-year-old medical student stood up in a theater during a screening of the Hollywood film "Fight Club," Wednesday night and opened fire, killing three people and wounding five."We're shocked," said Police Lt. Col. Fernando Franco de Paulo. "We're used to seeing this in the United States, but not here."
Brazil has plenty of violent crime, but it usually has roots in the urban slums. Brazilians were riveted by the April shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado and by the white, middle-class teenage gunmen -- youngsters who seemed to have everything.
Like Mateus da Costa Meira.
A medical resident and the son of a well-to-do family, Meira went to the last screening at Cinema 5 in the Morumbi shopping mall, an enclave of upscale shops in an exclusive district of South America's biggest city.
About 30 people were in the audience when Meira went into the bathroom and fired a few shots at the mirror, police inspector Miguel Pinheiro said. Apparently, no one noticed.
"Then he walked back into the theater and started firing at random," Pinheiro said. Two women and a man died.
After emptying his gun's 40-round clip, Meira paused to reload and was overcome by members of the audience, Pinheiro said.
"I heard a popping noise," said Vanessa Fernandes Maio. "I told my husband it sounded like gunshots, but he said I was imagining things. Then this man comes running down the aisle shooting all over the place and everyone threw themselves to the floor.
"Every few seconds he would stop, watch a bit of the movie and start shooting again," she said.
Meira was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Morumbi district police chief Olavo Francisco said Meira had psychiatric problems and apparently was addicted to cocaine. A search of his apartment turned up "large amounts of cocaine and crack" as well as 300 rounds of ammunition, Francisco said.
Although police here likened the shooting to those in the United States -- most recently in Hawaii and Seattle -- the rest of the world is not immune to such violence. On Monday, a 16-year-old boy opened fire on a street in the Alpine spa town of Bad Reichenhall, Germany, killing five people including himself. In 1996, a gunman killed a teacher and 16 children in a Scottish kindergarten class; the same year, a gunman killed 35 at a historical site in Tasmania, Australia.
At a televised news conference, Francisco held up three scrawled notes he said were found in Meira's wastebasket. One read: "This is the effect of drugs. I am not like this." Two others had the same phrase: "Media, reality. Hypocritical society."
In a rambling, three-hour deposition marked by frequent memory lapses, Meira told police he had been planning the shooting for seven years, Francisco said.
"He told us he was always being observed by strangers and that he often heard voices," Francisco said, although he suggested Meira was trying to lay the ground for an insanity plea.
Psychiatrist Jose Cassio Pitta, who began treating Meira on Oct. 17, described him as a "shy, withdrawn and anxious person who never showed any signs of aggressive behavior."
Pitta also said there was a connection between the movie and the shooting, although he declined to elaborate. Police said Meira told them he picked the film because one of the characters was schizophrenic.
In "Fight Club," Brad Pitt and Edward Norton organize a band of frustrated men who find ritual satisfaction in bare-knuckle brawls. A spokeswoman for 20th Century Fox, the film's distributor, said the company didn't know of any link between the outburst and the movie.
Police also arrested Marcos Almeida, a drug trafficker who worked as Meira's driver and sold him the gun for about $2,600.
Marco Vinicio Petreluzzi, the Sao Paulo state security chief, said police were stumped about the motive.
"This could be inspired by acts performed in other countries," he said.
Police Col. Jose Vicente da Silva, a public security analyst, said the shooting shows how easy it is to acquire high-powered guns in Brazil. Only about 1.6 million of the estimated 20 million guns in the country are legally registered.
"Weapon sales in this country are completely out of control," he said.
Since June, a congressional committee has been debating a proposal to ban the sale and possession of guns. But many think the bill will get watered down by pro-gun lobbies, which claim it is unconstitutional.