Student Murdered
An argument over a girl has left a Form Three student of the Waterloo Secondary School dead after he was stabbed several times by a Form Five student.Renaldo Dixon, 14, of Bagna Trace, Chase Village, Chaguanas, died during emergency treatment at the Freeport Health Centre after he was stabbed three times and his wrist slit by a 16-year-old fellow student.Another student was cut on the neck when he tried to part the fight.The suspect, a Form Five student, who was supposed to be writing the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) history paper, has been detained.Police also recovered the knife used in what they said was a premeditated attack.
According to reports, Dixon and the girl were sitting on a bench around 10 am when the other boy attacked him.Students said the boy was supposed to write the CSEC history paper but did not show up for the exam.Instead he waited at the school until recess.School was dismissed after the incident except for those who were writing exams. But Form Five students who remained behind said the sight of pools of blood along the corridor haunted them while they wrote the exams."We are not afraid to come back to school but it was traumatising to see how someone so young could lose their life like that," one student said while leaving the Carapichaima school.He said there had been a stabbing before and the school had been given metal detectors but they had not been used for some time.
Exactly how a boy was able to enter the school with a knife was one of the questions on the mind of Dixon's traumatised mother, 34-year-old Camille Taitt."I sent my child to school this morning thinking he was going to come back home but he didn't come back home."He said: 'Mommy, can I get pie to carry to school?' I took it out and gave it to him. He said: 'Well, Mommy, later,' and that was it," Taitt said while being consoled by a relative.She said the school called after 10 am but by the time she arrived at the health centre he was already dead.Taitt said the fatal blow was dealt to her son's shoulder, which doctors measured at four centimetres wide.She said she did not know her son's attacker nor did she know if he had any trouble at school.
However, she said, her son and the girl were close friends."I know he had a friend but to be honest with you, I don't know if she was his girlfriend. I met her at school for a parents' day. We talked and I talked to her mom as well."If it was that the girl chose Renaldo over him, it will have a problem. I cannot say because he never came home and complained to me."She said one of her biggest challenges was to let her younger children know of his death."My children are by my brother. I haven't told them anything yet, except for the big one."The other two don't know. They are seven and three years old. How am I going to tell them their brother is not coming home?"She pleaded with the Government to reinstate corporal punishment in schools and called on parents to take an interest in their children's lives before someone else is murdered through school violence."You can't predict what they are going to do but you can talk to them. I talk to my children every day. You can talk to them, let them know what is right and wrong. "Find out what is going on with them, go to their schools, inquire what is going on with them because something had to lead him to this."
The Education Ministry's communications management adviser Alicia Busby said in a release the ministry would be providing counselling for the school's staff and students as well as Dixon's parents.She said: "The ministry's Student Support Services Division has dispatched a team and is co-ordinating counselling for students, teachers and parents."The Minister of Education, on behalf of the ministry, expresses his sadness and heartfelt condolences to the parents, family, classmates, students, teachers, friends and other loved ones. May God be with them at this time."