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Schools under siege
– violent students with ‘rambo’ knives, ice-picks terrorise teachers
Armed with ‘Rambo’ knives, ice-picks and an assortment of sharpened implements, violent students are holding some city schools under siege and parents and teachers fear that someone will be killed or seriously hurt if Ministry of Education officials continue to ignore the situation.
The student-on-student attacks escalated last week with reports of at least three students being stabbed during confrontations at schools. The attackers and victims are between 12 and 15 years old. There was also the case of a student who was nabbed with a firearm in his bag during school hours.
Two Fridays ago, 15-year-old Robert Daniels of Tutorial High School had to be hospitalised after being stabbed in the back with an ice-pick and struck on the forehead with a piece of wood.
That incident occurred when other students were gathered in the school’s auditorium for a farewell ceremony for a school official.
Robert Daniels: Stabbed and clubbed on the head
The Education Ministry’s Welfare Department and the police are investigating the incident and Daniels’ attacker, who is reportedly 14-years-old, may be charged.
On Wednesday last, a First Form student from Lodge Community High School was held down by a gang of students his age group and stabbed in his abdomen with a sharp object.
Fortunately, his injuries were not life threatening, but the lad’s mother is attempting to have her son transferred.
Just two days later, violence again erupted at Lodge Community High, after a student, armed with a pair of scissors, stabbed 13-year-old Rawle King in the vicinity of his temple.
At the time of the incident, King, his attacker and other students were gambling at the back of the school during classroom hours.
The injured lad told Kaieteur News that one of the gamblers became annoyed after losing $20. According to King, the loser took a pair of scissors from his schoolbag “and start firing wild.”
King’s assailant took him to the Principal’s office and promptly disappeared. The suspect’s relatives later apologised to the injured lad’s parents during a visit to their home.
At the time, they were unable to locate the culprit.
Reports indicate that armed students have wrested control from the teachers and security guards at Lodge Community High.
Rawl King: Stabbed in the head after winning $20 while gambling in school
They reportedly come to school with an assortment of sharpened implements and hardly attend classes.
The mother of the First Former who was stabbed, alleged that a senior school official asked her to take her son to the hospital because the official “didn’t have the time” to do so.
The mother also alleged that the teachers would “proudly” display the “ice picks, jukkers, and cutlasses” that they had seized from some of the students.
But some teachers blamed parents for encouraging the violence. One Lodge Community High School teacher spoke about a mother who bluntly said that she encouraged her two sons to take weapons to school “to protect themselves.”
Teachers and guards at the school have now escaped injury. One male teacher was recently struck on the head with a stone while two students were pelting each other. Nothing came out of the matter.
A female guard was allegedly gun-butted by a male after she refused to let him enter a school compound.
But the violence has reportedly spread to the nearby Enterprise Primary School, also located in Lodge.
While school officials declined to speak to this newspaper, Kaieteur News received reports of a violent 12-year-old boy who has been terrorising his colleagues.
The lad enters the school compound but seldom enters the classroom, despite being ordered to. He was recently caught in the school compound with a meat cleaver.
A source accused him of badly beating a female pupil and related that he was assaulted by the parent of another child he had beaten.
Sources alleged that officials of the Education Ministry’s Welfare were informed of the incidents.
To date, they have not visited the school.
“Maybe they are waiting for someone to be killed,” one source said.
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