Sascha Wil­son

Nine stu­dents of the AS­JA Boys' Col­lege, Char­lieville, who were al­leged­ly in­volved in a fight dur­ing gang vi­o­lence in the school on Tues­day, were each yes­ter­day grant­ed $3,000 bail on the con­di­tion that they re­port to the po­lice sta­tion once a week.One of the boys' moth­er col­lapsed in court af­ter the po­lice pros­e­cu­tor ex­pressed con­cern for the safe­ty of oth­er stu­dents and rec­om­mend­ed that the teenagers be sent to a cor­rec­tion fa­cil­i­ty for guid­ance.

Each charged with dis­turb­ing the peace by fight­ing, the boys–aged 14, 15, 16, 17–plead­ed not guilty when they ap­peared be­fore Ch­agua­nas Third Court Mag­is­trate Bramb­hanan Dubay.Two of the boys are Form Five stu­dents while the oth­ers are in Form Four. They were all sus­pend­ed fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent.

In ask­ing for bail, at­tor­ney Tara­dath Singh said the teenagers were try­ing to help two boys who were be­ing beat­en by oth­er stu­dents. Singh said the teenagers were first-time of­fend­ers and have the sup­port of mem­bers of the in­sti­tu­tion.How­ev­er, po­lice pros­e­cu­tor Sgt Ken Ali coun­tered that the boys were mem­bers of a gang in the school.

He said the stu­dents have been sus­pend­ed be­fore for a se­ries of in­dis­ci­plined acts, in­clud­ing fight­ing, as­sault, smok­ing, hav­ing ex­plo­sive de­vices and dis­or­der­ly con­duct. He said two were sus­pend­ed eight times, an­oth­er sev­en times and two oth­ers six times.

His­to­ry of vi­o­lence

Ali said the in­ci­dent start­ed with two gangs in­volv­ing stu­dents from Forms Four and Five on Fri­day. He said the ac­cused dis­rupt school ac­tiv­i­ties on a dai­ly ba­sis.Un­der the Young Of­fend­ers' Act, he said the stu­dents could be sent to an in­dus­tri­al school, where they could be taught moral, spir­i­tu­al and aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies.The school's vice-prin­ci­pal, Mr Ra­haman, who was in the court, told the mag­is­trate that in­creased vi­o­lence at the school had been go­ing on for a week now.

He re­called that a stu­dent in­volved in one of the gangs brought out­siders to beat up an­oth­er child in the school.He said weapons, in­clud­ing knives, were used in Mon­day's in­ci­dent and the mat­ter had been re­port­ed to the po­lice.The mag­is­trate said it was sad to see that AS­JA, which has an ex­cel­lent record, was be­ing sul­lied through the act.That could be ex­pect­ed of a school like Mu­cu­rapo - al­so cur­rent­ly the sub­ject of a probe in­to vi­o­lence - he said, but he ex­pect­ed bet­ter stan­dards from AS­JA.

A par­ent in court claimed that her son was be­ing vic­timised by one of the deans. An­oth­er claimed his son was beat­en up and had to be sent for ther­a­py. Singh said some of the par­ents have opt­ed to take their chil­dren out of school.The vice-prin­ci­pal agreed that re­mand­ing the teenagers in­to cus­tody was too harsh."I will not tol­er­ate any vi­o­lence, any hang thing or any dis­rup­tion in schools," Dubay said.

Bail was grant­ed with their par­ents as sure­ty. They were or­dered to re­port to the Ch­agua­nas Po­lice Sta­tion on Sat­ur­days and the mat­ter was ad­journed to April 16.