A 17-year-old student of St Mary’s Secondary School sustained two stab wounds to his chest after he was attacked by a another student around lunchtime yesterday.
According to Trevor Fenty, his assailant, a Fifth Form student and his colleagues who are part of a gang in the school, attacked him after he told them not to taunt him. The boy, who was seeking treatment for his injuries at the Georgetown Public Hospital, related that he was upset at remarks which were being thrown at him and a scuffle subsequently ensued between him and the alleged gang leader.
He said it was after he turned his back on the gang that he was attacked by the student, who was handed a pair of scissors by his colleagues.
He was stabbed at the top of his chest and according to his aunt, the wound measured approximately half of an inch in depth. She said her nephew lost some amount of blood before being treated yesterday afternoon.
Fenty related that during the last school term he was frequently taunted by his assailant, whom, he said, “had a problem because all the girls and me is friend”. He said that the young man would taunt him and according to him he made several reports to the school’s headteacher about the situation.
He said that when this new school year started, he became the subject of further attacks by the student, “he and he friends them start troubling me again and yesterday I couldn’t bear it “.
He said that during the lunch break yesterday he was in the vicinity of the canteen when his attacker and another student approached him. He said the two students began to taunt him, singing as they did so. He said the leader of the gang hit him and a scuffle ensued.
The gang then attacked him and according to him, one of the boys picked up two pieces of wood and hit him several times about his body. He said other students intervened and broke up the melee, but a friend recalled seeing another student placing a pair of scissors in the hand of the leader of the group. He said it was as he was walking away that he was attacked again by the student.
He said he observed blood flowing down his chest and a woman at the school’s canteen used a piece of cloth to stop the bleeding while he was taken to the principal’s office along with the other student.
The police were later called in. The young man’s aunt expressed disgust at the reaction of the school’s principal to the incident: “Imagine he went to her to make a report and she had him sitting there bleeding as she writing what happen…”
She said it took some time before her nephew was taken to the hospital for treatment. Another relative expressed concern at the incident, noting that it could have been worse. “These things upsetting; I doan know is what happening in the schools,” the woman added.
Violence in schools has been a major problem for the Education Ministry and there is also concern about students attacking each other outside of normal school hours. During the last school term two students died after sustaining stab wounds about their bodies while at extra lessons.
The Education Ministry has been taking steps to address the problem.
