An­na-Lisa Paul

"It’s sad that our coun­try is be­com­ing what it is to­day."

Robbed at gun­point as he walked along the main road in Cunu­pia around 5 pm on Fri­day, the fa­ther of a Form Two stu­dent at­tend­ing St George’s Col­lege, Barataria, said it may be time for him to con­sid­er ap­ply­ing for a per­son­al firearm in or­der to en­sure his own safe­ty.

In­di­cat­ing it was not an in­dict­ment on the part of law en­force­ment, the bro­ken-heart­ed man said, "It’s sad that we can’t feel free to ac­tu­al­ly walk the streets. We are even on our job sites and it is un­safe.”

Re­fus­ing to dis­close his name as he ex­it­ed the school with his son’s book bag slung across his shoul­der yes­ter­day morn­ing, the par­ent added, "These are things that we ex­pect, we know things are hap­pen­ing."

The man said he and his col­league had been robbed of their wal­lets and cell phones by the gun-tot­ing ban­dit.

Com­mend­ing the school au­thor­i­ties for how they han­dled the emailed bomb threat re­ceived late on Thurs­day, the fa­ther said, "The nice thing about it is that ac­tions were tak­en im­me­di­ate­ly, so that every­one was out of the dan­ger zone and they en­sured the au­thor­i­ties came and did what they had to do. I think it was han­dled care­ful­ly."

Re­fer­ring to the al­leged claim that a bomb had been placed in a book bag and would be det­o­nat­ed if the school failed to pay $100,000 (TT) by 10 am on Fri­day, the par­ent said even though it was even­tu­al­ly de­ter­mined to be a hoax, the au­thor­i­ties did the right thing by em­ploy­ing the req­ui­site safe­ty mech­a­nisms as they wait­ed for the school and its’ con­tents to be thor­ough­ly searched.

He said, "You nev­er know if some­thing is a hoax un­til af­ter the fact. You may take it as a hoax and then if some­thing hap­pens, it would be a whole dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion."

The emailed threat which was for­ward­ed to se­lect Catholic sec­ondary schools around 11 pm on Thurs­day, sent of­fi­cials from the Cy­ber Crime Unit and the Ca­nine Unit in­to ac­tion from as ear­ly as 6 am on Fri­day as de­tailed search­es were car­ried out at each school, as well as ar­riv­ing ve­hi­cles and peo­ple in­clud­ing stu­dents and teach­ers.

At St George’s Col­lege, stu­dents were al­lowed to leave with their par­ents but had not been able to re-en­ter the school to re­trieve their bags on Fri­day.

As such, the prin­ci­pal asked par­ents and stu­dents to vis­it the school yes­ter­day from 8 am to 5 pm, in or­der to col­lect their be­long­ings.

A brief walk-through yes­ter­day re­vealed half-open bags ly­ing atop desks; open text­books whose pages flut­tered in the breeze; and even some half-drunk wa­ter bot­tles left open, some on the floor in­di­cat­ing the stu­dents had left in haste.

Ac­com­pa­nied by his fa­ther and younger broth­er yes­ter­day, a Form One stu­dent ad­mit­ted he was scared af­ter learn­ing of the bomb threat.

Ask­ing that his name not be used, the 13-year-old said he was still shak­en by the in­ci­dent.

He said, "It was kind of fright­en­ing be­cause af­ter we heard about the bomb scare, we were all over."

De­nounc­ing the ac­tion, the stu­dent added, "It was dis­ap­point­ing be­cause they were try­ing to dis­rupt an ex­am which the chil­dren need­ed to do for them to get in­to what they want to do, it was self­ish and dis­ap­point­ing."

The boy’s fa­ther al­so ques­tioned what was the mo­tive be­hind the ac­tion which cre­at­ed pan­ic among par­ents, teach­ers and stu­dents.

"I was fright­ened for my chil­dren and oth­er peo­ple’s chil­dren when I heard about it. All kind of things hap­pen­ing in the world right now and es­pe­cial­ly in this coun­try right now, is re­al thing go­ing on and we not see­ing any progress at all.

"The ques­tion right now is what to do from here? Where do we go from here?”

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter: They're ter­ror­ists

Liken­ing the per­pe­tra­tors of Fri­day’s email bomb hoax to "ter­ror­ists", Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia again con­demned the ac­tion which he said did not in­ter­rupt the planned ad­min­is­tra­tion of the CSEC and CAPE ex­ams.

Claim­ing it was dis­taste­ful and ab­hor­rent, Gar­cia said, "Ob­vi­ous­ly, the ob­jec­tive was two-fold in that they want­ed to pre­vent the ex­ams from tak­ing place, and al­so, they want­ed to bring the Catholic ed­u­ca­tion in­to dis­re­pute be­cause it was on­ly Catholic schools that were tar­get­ed."

Schools where threats were emailed to in­clud­ed St Mary’s Col­lege; St Joseph’s Con­vent, Port of Spain; Fa­ti­ma Col­lege; Holy Name Con­vent; St Joseph’s Con­vent, St Joseph; and St George’s Col­lege.

Gar­cia said,"De­nom­i­na­tion­al schools in­clud­ing the Catholic Church have been do­ing a fan­tas­tic job in as­sist­ing Gov­ern­ment to pro­vide an ed­u­ca­tion for the na­tion’s chil­dren. It is dif­fi­cult to as­cer­tain why these schools were tar­get­ed."

De­vant ques­tioned

For­mer trans­port min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj. mean­while, has been ques­tioned by po­lice in re­la­tion to Fri­day’s bomb threat which was emailed to se­lect school prin­ci­pals in the hopes that it would have dis­rupt­ed CSEC and CAPE ex­ams.

In a post on Face­book last evening, Ma­haraj con­firmed he was vis­it­ed by two of­fi­cers from the Ari­ma Po­lice Sta­tion.

Re­veal­ing the in­ter­view took place around 11 am, Ma­haraj said they en­quired in­to his posts on so­cial me­dia Fri­day morn­ing which ini­tial­ly warned of a search tak­ing place at St Joseph’s Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, fol­lowed by a pic­ture in which the threat that had been emailed to prin­ci­pals was post­ed to What­sApp.

He said, "The con­duct of the two of­fi­cers were pro­fes­sion­al dur­ing the en­tire process. The pur­pose of the vis­it was as­cer­tain the in­for­ma­tion I shared specif­i­cal­ly the ex­tor­tion note's ori­gin. While I wished to as­sist as much as I could, I did not re­veal my source as they in­di­cat­ed they want­ed not to be named. I did re­lay to the of­fi­cers all the in­for­ma­tion that I had on the is­sue."

Ma­haraj ex­pressed hope that the po­lice would act quick­ly to "ap­pre­hend the per­son re­spon­si­ble for the scare".