Class­es at the Anstey Memo­r­i­al Girl’s An­gli­can School were not af­fect­ed, de­spite a gun­man’s al­leged dash through the com­pound to evade po­lice. 

Guardian Me­dia was told that the gun­man was a rel­a­tive of Clint Bhag­wan­deen, who was shot dead at D’ Up Lo Bar along Cof­fee Street, San Fer­nan­do last Sat­ur­day.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the gun­man was walk­ing along Cof­fee Street around 9.30 am when he saw the 33-year-old man whom he be­lieved car­ried out the mur­der. The gun­man fired sev­er­al shots at his tar­get, who es­caped with­out in­jury.

Po­lice who were on pa­trol re­ceived a mes­sage about the shoot­ing and quick­ly re­spond­ed.

Wit­ness­es said the gun­man ran down Dray­ton Street and climbed the school’s fence and passed through the com­pound.

He dis­ap­peared af­ter climb­ing over the school wall at the back.

A busi­ness own­er said that he was hav­ing break­fast out­side his shop when the al­leged gun­man ran in­to the street. He said he did not hear the gun­shots and the school was not dis­turbed and there was no scream­ing de­spite the gun­man en­ter­ing the school.

With­in two min­utes, a few po­lice ve­hi­cles pulled up and searched for the gun­man. Around 2 pm, the gun­man’s tar­get and his moth­er showed up at the San Fer­nan­do CID and re­port­ed that Bhah­wan­deen’s rel­a­tive and an­oth­er man ap­proached him yes­ter­day morn­ing. He ob­served them reach­ing for some­thing in the ve­hi­cle and as­sumed that it was a firearm so he ran away.

He told po­lice that at no time did he see a gun or did some­one shoot at him.  

In­sp Jones and Cpl Bridge­mo­han of the Homi­cide Bu­reau of In­ves­ti­ga­tions took a state­ment from them.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in a state­ment said no shoot­ing took place near the school. How­ev­er, a school of­fi­cial did re­port that some­one jumped the fence to get to the oth­er side. 

The Min­istry said that School Su­per­vi­sors from the Vic­to­ria Ed­u­ca­tion Dis­trict in San Fer­nan­do vis­it­ed the school and re­port­ed that there is no truth to re­ports that a shoot­ing oc­curred yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The min­istry said, “The prin­ci­pal in a writ­ten re­port said at 9:02 a.m, the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer re­port­ed that an in­trud­er ran through the com­pound, al­leged­ly be­ing chased by the po­lice. The man jumped the wall, ran through the com­pound and ex­it­ed at the back of the school.”

The state­ment said ac­cord­ing to the prin­ci­pal, at no time was there any shoot­ing on the com­pound and the stu­dents were at all times safe. There was al­so no scream­ing or pan­de­mo­ni­um in the school as claimed by the news­pa­per re­port.

The prin­ci­pal, ac­cord­ing to the min­istry’s state­ment, said the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice of­fi­cers con­duct­ed a thor­ough search of the com­pound and lat­er de­clared the school com­pound safe.

Bhag­wan­deen’s mur­der

Bhag­wan­deen, 33 of Ol­era Heights, San Fer­nan­do was a bar pa­tron on Sat­ur­day night when he got in­to an ar­gu­ment with a man.

The man left, but threat­ened to re­turn and “shoot up the Cof­fee”. Lat­er on, Bhag­wan­deen was sit­ting out­side the bar when a gun­man shot him sev­er­al times and ran off.

No one has been held for his mur­der.