On the night of November 3, 1999, a shooting occurred inside screen number 5 of the movie theater at the Morumbi shopping mall in São Paulo, Brazil, during a screening of the film Fight Club. The perpetrator, Mateus da Costa Meira, then a 24-year-old sixth-year medical student at the Faculty of Medical Sciences of São Paulo's Holy House, entered the theater around 10:10 p.m., about 55 minutes into the film. After watching for roughly 15 minutes, he went to the restroom and fired his weapon at a mirror. Returning to the theater, he first fired toward the ceiling, which some viewers mistook for a special effect of the film, then fired at a wall, prompting panic. He subsequently fired into a group of moviegoers. The shooting lasted approximately three minutes and ended when a group of viewers subdued him as he attempted to reload his weapon.
Three people died as a result of the attack: Hermè Luisa Jatobá Vadasz, 46, an employee of the Young & Rubicam advertising agency, whose heart was later donated to a patient at a public hospital; Fabiana Lobão Freitas, 25, a photographer at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo, who was attending the screening with her boyfriend, film producer Carlos Eduardo Porto de Oliveira, who was injured; and Júlio Maurício Zemaitis, 29, an economist. One victim died at the scene and two others died later in local hospitals. Four additional people were injured.
Meira had reportedly planned an attack for seven years and told police he selected Fight Club because its protagonist has schizophrenia. He had obtained a MAC-11 submachine gun illegally for R$5,000 from an individual identified as his driver, in addition to already owning a pistol. Investigators also examined him in connection with drug possession and CD piracy after finding related equipment, cocaine, and crack in his apartment.
Caught at the scene, Meira was convicted and initially sentenced to 120 years and six months in prison; the sentence was later reduced to 48 years and 9 months by the State Court of São Paulo. He was held at Carandiru Penitentiary until its 2002 deactivation, then transferred to a penitentiary in Tremembé, and later, in 2009, to a penitentiary in Salvador at his family's request. On May 8, 2009, he attempted to kill a 68-year-old cellmate with scissors. He was tried for this attack but was acquitted in 2011 after being found not criminally responsible due to his mental diagnosis, and was ordered transferred to the Hospital of Treatment and Custody in Salvador, where he remained until his release in 2024. The theater screen where the shooting occurred was permanently closed, and the cinema's remaining screens closed in 2012.
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