Rafael Calzada school shooting

On the afternoon of 4 August 2000, after classes had ended at Secondary School No. 9 in Rafael Calzada, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina, 19-year-old Javier Ignacio Romero opened fire at the school's entrance gate. Romero had been leaving the school when a student called out a nickname, "Pantriste," that classmates used to mock him, referencing a character from a recently released Argentine animated film. Romero took a .22 Bagual snubnosed revolver, reportedly legally owned by his mother for self-defense, from his backpack and fired three shots. The first missed, the second grazed the ear of 18-year-old Gabriel Alfredo Ferrari, and the third struck 16-year-old Mauricio Ariel Salvador in the skull. Both had attended the same class as Romero. Witnesses reported Romero shouted a threat during the shooting.

Romero fled to his older sister's nearby apartment, where he was staying on weekdays due to its proximity to the school, ate lunch, and went to sleep. Roughly five hours later, his mother arrived with a police unit and he was arrested.

The two wounded students were taken to Fiorito Hospital. Ferrari was released the same day, while Salvador died three days later from his injuries.

In the aftermath, Romero reportedly apologized to the victims' families, and the case drew national attention in Argentina to the issue of school bullying. The legal proceedings were presided over by Judge Marisa Salvo of Lomas de Zamora. Psychological evaluations found that Romero suffered from schizoid personality disorder and had experienced a brief psychotic episode at the time of the shooting. On 8 April 2003, he was declared not guilty by reason of insanity. Despite this finding, authorities considered him a continued danger to society; he was subsequently interned across four different prisons and one psychiatric hospital before being discharged in 2018.

This shooting is recognized as one of the first fatal school shootings in Latin America, and it followed an earlier, non-fatal Argentine case in May 1997 in which a 14-year-old shot a classmate to death but was not prosecuted due to his age being below Argentina's age of criminal responsibility. Five years after the Rafael Calzada shooting, Argentina experienced the Carmen de Patagones school shooting, which killed three students and injured five others, and which remains the deadliest school shooting recorded in the country. Following the Rafael Calzada shooting, two of Romero's classmates, including Ferrari, reportedly dropped out of high school.