AN­NA-LISA PAUL

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

A Form Five stu­dent of the Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School, To­ba­go is to­day fight­ing for his life af­ter be­ing stabbed sev­er­al times with an icepick dur­ing a fight.

The vic­tim who was said to have suf­fered in­ter­nal bleed­ing, re­mained hos­pi­talised in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion last night.

The teenag­er was in­jured in the brawl which took place in one of the school’s class­rooms, dur­ing the lunch pe­ri­od yes­ter­day.

Shocked by the in­ci­dent, To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary of Ed­u­ca­tion Zor­isha Hack­ett told Guardian Me­dia, “I am ut­ter­ly ap­palled and deeply griev­ed by the heinous stab­bing in­ci­dent.”

She con­firmed that the mid­day brawl had left one stu­dent grave­ly in­jured.

Hack­ett said, “This act of vi­o­lence is an out­right as­sault on the very sanc­ti­ty of our ed­u­ca­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions, and the safe­ty of our staff and stu­dents.”

It was un­clear up to last evening, if the sus­pect who is a fel­low stu­dent, had been de­tained by po­lice fol­low­ing the stab­bing.

A 32-sec­ond video record­ed by a stu­dent and post­ed on so­cial me­dia, showed the vic­tim pulling the sus­pect away from an­oth­er stu­dent whom he had been punch­ing and at­tempt­ing to stab.

The vic­tim and an­oth­er stu­dent were seen beat­ing the sus­pect about the head and body un­til he went down on the floor, fol­low­ing which he got up and grabbed on­to the vic­tim as he stabbed him sev­er­al times on the left side of the body with the red-han­dled screw­driv­er.

Hack­ett warned, “School vi­o­lence in any form is ut­ter­ly in­tol­er­a­ble and com­plete­ly un­ac­cept­able.”

She said, “It not on­ly shat­ters lives, but al­so un­der­mines the fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ples of ed­u­ca­tion as a safe haven for in­tel­lec­tu­al and emo­tion­al growth.”

Hack­ett ex­tend­ed sup­port to the vic­tim, his fam­i­ly, the school, and the wider com­mu­ni­ty dur­ing this har­row­ing time.

She added while her heart ached for the in­jured stu­dent, her re­solve had been strength­ened to root out such de­spi­ca­ble acts from schools in To­ba­go.

She pledged the sup­port of the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, Re­search and Tech­nol­o­gy in part­ner­ing with law en­force­ment, “To en­sure swift jus­tice and com­pre­hen­sive mea­sures to pre­vent such atroc­i­ties from ever oc­cur­ring again.”

While class­es were dis­missed for the day fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent as stu­dents re­mained trau­ma­tised, Hack­ett is­sued a call for peo­ple to recom­mit to fos­ter­ing a cul­ture of safe­ty, re­spect and in­clu­siv­i­ty in schools.

She ap­pealed to peo­ple to stand res­olute in the face of school vi­o­lence.

Supt Ro­hdill Kirk of the Scar­bor­ough Po­lice Sta­tion con­firmed that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is un­der­way.

Last year, a class of stu­dents from the same school—Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary—bru­tal­ly at­tacked one fe­male stu­dent.

It showed over 20 stu­dents tak­ing turns—and at times to­geth­er—kick­ing, slap­ping, chok­ing and push­ing the stu­dent from all di­rec­tions.

One stu­dent even climbed on a desk to kick the vic­tim in the head from above.