COTABATO CITY (August 18, 2026) — A junior high school student killed a classmate with a pistol and, subsequently, shot himself dead after his rampage inside the campus of the Ateneo De Zamboanga University (AdZU) in Barangay Tumaga in Zamboanga City on Tuesday morning, August 18.

Local officials and investigators from the Zamboanga City Police Office told reporters after the incident that the attacker, Mohammad Abel Jalani, armed with a pistol and a short-type combat rifle, barged into a room in the fourth floor of a school building in the AdZU campus and opened fire at Grade 8 students, killing one of them, Patrick Dylan Wee, a scion of a big Chinese clan in Zamboanga City.

The gunshots that reverberated through the classrooms in the school building caused panic among students.

After his shooting Frenzy, Jalani reportedly went down to the third floor of the building and, there, shot himself with a pistol, killing himself instantly.

Radio reports said Jalani, whose patriarch is a senior official of the Bureau of Customs in Region 9, brought two firearms inside the AdZU campus, one of which he used in attacking classmates inside their classroom.

Initial reports from police teams led by Major Napoleon Velasco, chief of the Zamboanga City Police Station 7 covering Barangay Tumaga, and his subordinate, Lt. Romeo Ocampo, Jr., stated that policemen had recovered a Glock 9 millimeter pistol each from Jalani and Wee.

Wee’s close friends and relatives had told reporters that he was not a violent person, known for his being friendly and polite and that the assertion that he was armed was, for them, virtually unbelievable.

Radio reports stated that Wee is from a Chinese family that has legitimate capital-intensive businesses in Zamboanga City.

Students had told reporters that it is possible that it was Jalani who brought the pistols and the combat rifle in their campus that he used in attacking his classmates in an incident that left Wee dead and sent students running for their lives.

Witnesses said the pistol that he first used in the atrocity jammed and that it could be possible that it was the one found near Wee’s cadaver.