Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The three Diego Mar­tin North Sec­ondary stu­dents who bru­tal­ly as­sault­ed a Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral stu­dent and left him un­con­scious along a road­way have been sent on ex­tend­ed sus­pen­sion.

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly con­firmed this yes­ter­day, say­ing they had re­ceived the re­port on the stu­dents and they had giv­en the rel­e­vant dis­ci­pli­nary mea­sures to be tak­en.

“The con­se­quences of the ac­tions of the three chil­dren in­volved were com­men­su­rate with the grav­i­ty of their ac­tions; with con­sid­er­a­tion giv­en to their dis­ci­pli­nary records,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

On Jan­u­ary 9, while on his way to pick up his broth­er af­ter school, the teen was heck­led by the three boys, who then as­sault­ed him. The teen, who has epilep­sy, was left un­con­scious on the road­way, near Jasper Av­enue in Diego Mar­tin.

A busi­ness own­er saw him at around 3 pm and took him to the Diego Mar­tin Health Cen­tre but on the way there, the boy had two epilep­sy at­tacks. He was even­tu­al­ly trans­ferred to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex (EWM­SC), Mt Hope.

The boy’s moth­er Nahi­da Mar­shall, who plans to press charges, said yes­ter­day she was hap­py that the boys were sus­pend­ed, as her son is still fear­ful to at­tend school.

“My son, if he on­ly know those chil­dren are any­where close by, he wouldn’t want to go to school and just the mem­o­ry of see­ing them can trig­ger his seizures,” she said.

She said she hopes the min­istry takes the nec­es­sary steps to re­ha­bil­i­tate the boys, not­ing the end re­sult could have been worse. She called on par­ents to take these sit­u­a­tions se­ri­ous­ly.

“I am go­ing all the way...I thank God every­day that my son is okay to a point, he’ s get­ting pain but God is good, I just want him to be com­fort­able and go to school not study­ing that he could get beat­en up again,” she said.

Ear­li­er this month, Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent of the West­ern Di­vi­sion, Garvin Hen­ry, said they had launched a pre­lim­i­nary in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter. He said they had been pay­ing at­ten­tion to Diego Mar­tin North Sec­ondary and put sys­tems in place to pre­vent and de­ter vi­o­lence among the stu­dents, adding there are po­lice pa­trols out­side the school be­fore as­sem­bly and for dis­missal.