A woman hospitalized in a Sao Paulo suburb with gunshot wounds inflicted by a man who killed her daughter and husband woke up to find herself next to her assailant.

"This is soap opera material," the news website G1 quoted Luiz Roberto Bilo, a police inspector in the town of Mogi das Cruzes, as saying.

Bilo, who is leading the investigation into the shooting, said he was trying to establish the motive and to determine whether another person was involved.

The murder was recorded by security cameras aboard a bus. Outside the vehicle, security guard Jose Cosme Barros was gunned down. His wife and their five-year-old daughter tried to escape by getting aboard but were also hit by the shooter.

Barros and his daughter were fatally shot while the wife, 28-year-old Naircleide Duarte, was rushed to a local hospital in serious condition.

A few hours later, the assailant, identified as 27-year-old Lucas Ribeiro do Nascimento, was caught up in a brawl outside a nightclub and sustained gunshot wounds, according to police.

By sheer coincidence, Ribeiro was hospitalized in the same facility and in the same room as Duarte, according to police who said they had a big file on the suspect, notably for robberies and murders.