A 15-year-old Linden girl, who was afraid of returning to the school where she has been a target of students, has gone missing from her guardian’s home.
The juvenile recently stabbed a 13-year-old Linden Foundation Secondary schoolmate, who was subsequently hospitalised for several weeks. The 13-year-old girl was stabbed in the back by the now missing girl, who was said to be frustrated after being repeatedly beaten and taunted by peers. The day prior to the stabbing, the teen was attacked and hit in the head with a piece of wood by another student.
Believed to have been a move to scare off her attackers and vent her anger, the 15-year-old subsequent to the stabbing returned home and admitted to committing the offence when confronted by police and social workers. She handed over the weapon, which she had already cleaned and put away and was arrested. According to her grandmother, Jennifer Adams, no charge has been laid against the girl.
The stabbing victim has since been discharged from hospital and returned to school last Monday.
Meanwhile, prior to her disappearance, the relatives and the welfare officers of Region 10 had been facing difficulties getting the 15-year-old back in school. Adams told the Stabroek News that she was preparing to have her granddaughter enrolled at a private school but was prevented from doing so by the welfare officers. “They tell me that she has to go back to the same school because she could be transferred to another school,” she said.
The teen said she did not want to return to the school because she was sure that she would still be a target of bullies in the school. “Even after this whole stabbing thing, the children from the school used to pass here and trouble her. She can’t go no place. They troubling her,” the woman said. She recounted that recently her granddaughter was at the Mackenzie Sports Club swimming pool, just a few yards away from where she lived in Greenheart Street, Mackenzie, Linden, when a group of children attempted to attack her.
Children would approach her at her grandmother’s house and taunt and threaten her. According to the woman, she was forced to make a report at the Mackenzie Police Station because one of the children had threatened to burn her house down.
Two weeks ago, the teen disobeyed her grandmother’s instruction not to leave the home and has not returned. The woman said that they had a discussion earlier that day, when the child insisted that she was not prepared to return to the same school. “She purchased a new outfit from her aunt earlier in the day and later the afternoon wanted to go back on the road and I told her no,” Adams said.
She left with only the clothes on her back and would call her grandmother’s home from time to time. “When she call and I answer she does hang up the phone on me but she would talk to her little cousin. The other day she asked the lil cousin to carry her photo album out front and I didn’t allow her to.”
Several persons, including a CID officer, said that they have seen the child around once in a while and had told someone that she had been in Kwakwani for some time. A missing person’s report has been filed at the Mackenzie Police Station.
Noting that she is of poor health, Adams said that she is not prepared to take the child back into her care because she is uncontrollable. “Her mother has to try with her, but Shonette (the child’s mother) can’t handle her. She doesn’t listen to her mother for nothing. I am the only person she used to listen to, so that’s why I took her,” she said.
Prior to the stabbing, the 15-year-old attended the Christianburg Wismar Secondary School but was absent for most of the last school term of the past school year. “She didn’t want to go back to form three there. She used to get into a lot of problems with the children there too, so we decided to get a transfer into the Linden Foundation Secondary School,” Adams explained. However, at the new school, the teasing, threats and physical abuse continued. Many days she was forced to either run home on the bell or stay at the head teacher’s office for long hours before leaving for home. On a number of occasions, she had to jump the school fence to go home because she was fearful of passing the gates.
