RHON­DOR DOWLAT-ROS­TANT

A shoot­ing in­ci­dent that left a man dead forced of­fi­cials to re­vert to full on­line school­ing at the Jern­ing­ham Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School and the Cunu­pia Sec­ondary School on Tues­day.

The vic­tim was iden­ti­fied as Sher­win Ger­mi­na of Moru­ga.

Mean­while, res­i­dents in the area re­mained shak­en and trau­ma­tised over the in­ci­dent, with some even clos­ing their busi­ness­es for the rest of the day.

Ac­cord­ing to a po­lice re­port, at about 6.50 am a man in a sil­ver Nis­san B15 pulled up near Cunu­pia Sec­ondary and while he was turn­ing his car around, a blue Yaris pulled up. Sev­er­al men ran out to­wards the B15 and opened fire on the dri­ver. They then re­turned to the ve­hi­cle, which sped off.

The se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers from the school checked on the dri­ver, who was mo­tion­less.

The of­fi­cers told po­lice that they recog­nised the vic­tim as he had come by ear­li­er at about 5.20 am ask­ing for a woman on­ly by the name of Melis­sa and en­quired if she worked there.

Po­lice of­fi­cers were called in and the area was cor­doned off.

An of­fi­cial at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, who wished not to be named, told the Guardian Me­dia that pupils and teach­ers ar­riv­ing ear­ly to at­tend school were al­lowed on the school’s com­pound, but a de­ci­sion was made to send the chil­dren back home and on­line class­es were ini­ti­at­ed for the day in­stead of phys­i­cal class­es.

At the scene, res­i­dents in the area re­mained locked up tight­ly as they claimed they were still reel­ing from the sound of the gun­shots. Two near­by par­lours al­so re­mained closed.

“This is a very fright­en­ing ex­pe­ri­ence for us to be awak­ened by so many gun­shots, then to see a man dy­ing in his car. Lucky thing it was still hours be­fore school and those chil­dren would have start to come in. This scary too bad man. I lock up in­side since,” one res­i­dent who wished anonymi­ty said.

Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit, in an in­ter­view with the Guardian Me­dia, de­scribed the in­ci­dent as “a shock­ing thing.” “It’s the first time some­thing like this hap­pened in Cunu­pia in the vicin­i­ty of the school.

“So the very fact it hap­pened at the front of a school, to me as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive, it’s very con­cern­ing,” Mo­hit said.

Mo­hit ex­plained that she has had a good re­la­tion­ship with the po­lice in Ch­agua­nas and Cen­tral and as­sured that she will have con­ver­sa­tions to see if pa­trols can be height­ened, as she is aware “it’s lack­ing.”

“But you can’t blame the po­lice ser­vice be­cause they don’t have the re­sources to do what needs to be done on many oc­ca­sions. Cunu­pia, for ex­am­ple, I know they have some chal­lenges in the past with ve­hi­cles be­cause I’ve raised it sev­er­al times. I’m not sure at the mo­ment what’s hap­pen­ing with re­source pro­vi­sions but I will def­i­nite­ly be mak­ing con­tact with the po­lice for rec­om­men­da­tions on more pa­trols and reg­u­lar spot checks with­in the ar­eas,” Mo­hit said.

Mo­hit said sub­se­quent to her hear­ing of the in­ci­dent, she im­me­di­ate­ly be­gan in­quir­ing.

“There was a shoot­ing at the en­trance of the sec­ondary school. It seems as though the per­son, a man, they found him dead in the car rid­dled with bul­lets. This is what I got. It seems as though he crashed in­to the gate of the pri­ma­ry school,” she said.

“Per­sons in the area heard gun­shots very ear­ly around 6 am, but I have no oth­er con­fir­ma­tions. I did not speak with the prin­ci­pal of the Jern­ing­ham school but Cunu­pia (of­fi­cials) told me they had stu­dents who come ear­ly but be­cause of the in­ci­dent, they could not leave them on the com­pound as it was a crime scene.

“So they made arrange­ments with the Sergeant to get them in the school with­out see­ing the body and they made arrange­ments for calls to have them re­turn home. They sent mes­sages and calls as much as they could have to tell them don’t both­er to bring the stu­dents to school.”

When con­tact­ed to find out how their se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers were far­ing af­ter the in­ci­dent, cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions man­ag­er at the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vices (MTS), Adri­an Ray­mond, said, “The com­pa­ny al­ways pro­vides trau­ma ther­a­py and coun­selling to our of­fi­cers if the cir­cum­stances re­quire same. That’s a stan­dard part of our op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dure.”

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