RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice have launched an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a re­port of an as­sault at Siparia West Sec­ondary School, where three stu­dents re­port­ed­ly at­tacked a Form Two stu­dent on Wednes­day, leav­ing him bruised and shak­en.

The three as­sailants al­leged­ly tar­get­ed the Form Two boy over a ba­by pow­der slap­ping game that took place at the school two weeks ago.

Po­lice said Wednes­day’s in­ci­dent oc­curred dur­ing the school’s lunch break and left the 14-year-old stu­dent with in­juries to his face and ribs.

His moth­er made a for­mal re­port to the Siparia Po­lice Sta­tion on Thurs­day, re­quest­ing that charges be laid.

In a state­ment, she told po­lice her son had been par­tic­i­pat­ing in a re­cent game at the school where stu­dents took turns slap­ping each oth­er with hand­fuls of ba­by pow­der.

She ac­knowl­edged that her son may have played an ac­tive role in the game, pos­si­bly pro­vok­ing the oth­er stu­dents.

Po­lice said the game had been go­ing on among stu­dents in her son’s year group and had been in­for­mal­ly re­port­ed to school staff pri­or to the in­ci­dent.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said on the day of the as­sault, the Form 2 stu­dent went to the school wash­room, where he was al­leged­ly con­front­ed by two stu­dents aged 14 and one aged 16.

The group re­port­ed­ly punched him sev­er­al times in the face and kicked him in the ribs be­fore leav­ing him. Fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent, school of­fi­cials took him to the Siparia Health Fa­cil­i­ty, where he re­ceived med­ical at­ten­tion be­fore be­ing dis­charged.

The dis­traught moth­er in­formed school of­fi­cials of the al­leged at­tack fol­low­ing which she was ad­vised to for­mal­ly re­port the mat­ter to the po­lice to en­sure fur­ther ac­tion.

Po­lice said they were con­cerned about es­ca­lat­ing peer con­fronta­tions and re­tal­i­a­tion games, which may stem from on­line chal­lenges and so­cial me­dia trends pop­u­lar among teenagers.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for a com­ment but we are still await­ing her re­sponse.

Act­ing Cpl Bachu is lead­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.