Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Pan­ic broke out at the Moru­ga Com­pos­ite School yes­ter­day as 17 fe­male stu­dents fell mys­te­ri­ous­ly ill and be­gan rolling on the ground, hiss­ing and blab­ber­ing in a strange tongue, af­ter suf­fer­ing bouts of nau­sea and headaches. Two of the stu­dents re­port­ed­ly tried to throw them­selves off a rail­ing and had to be phys­i­cal­ly re­strained, trig­ger­ing fears of a pos­si­ble de­mon at­tack. The dra­ma start­ed dur­ing the lunch hour in the Form One block and quick­ly spread to oth­er ar­eas. Form Five stu­dent Kern Mollineau, who at­tends the Light­house Taber­na­cle Church, said he got wor­ried when the girls' eyes be­gan rolling up in their heads and they be­gan beat­ing up on the ground.

With the as­sis­tance of sev­er­al oth­er stu­dents and teach­ers, the pupils were tak­en to the mul­ti-pur­pose hall where some of them fell in­to a se­mi-con­scious state. Mollineau re­called: "One girl was blab­ber­ing as if in a strange lan­guage. I could not un­der­stand what she was say­ing. "It was sound­ing like 'sheb­baber­be­beb shh­h­hee.' The girls were un­usu­al­ly strong. We had to hold them down so that they will not hurt them­selves. "The teach­ers were right there. I get a kick in my face when one of the girls start­ed beat­ing up on the floor. Many of them had bruis­es." Mollineau claimed he ac­tu­al­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed with the "dev­il which had pos­sessed the girl. "I asked the Dev­il what he want­ed with the girls and the voice said he want­ed a life. He kept say­ing to send the girls in the toi­let and to leave them alone," Mollineau claimed.

Ro­man Catholic priests, as well as pas­tors from near­by church­es, in­clud­ing Josephine Charles, Deb­o­rah Charles and Pas­tor Gor­don, vis­it­ed the school and be­gan show­er­ing the chil­dren with holy wa­ter and prayers. Two more stu­dents, Kris­ton Mollineau and Kishon Bethel, said they too were called by teach­ers to as­sist the ill girls. Kris­ton said the girls com­plained of headaches and some of them want­ed to go to the toi­let. Six am­bu­lances ar­rived at the school ac­com­pa­nied by po­lice teams from the Moru­ga and St Mary's Po­lice Post. A par­ty of fire of­fi­cers from the Princes Town Fire Sta­tion, led by act­ing As­sis­tant Di­vi­sion­al Fire Of­fi­cer Ramdeo Boodoo vis­it­ed the school and be­gan con­duct­ing sev­er­al tests on the sur­round­ings to de­ter­mine the cause of the prob­lem.

Boodoo said there was noth­ing in the en­vi­ron­ment to trig­ger faint­ing spells, nau­sea and headaches. A teacher, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said two weeks ago an Or­isha woman came to the school and had a dis­pute with a mem­ber of staff. He said fol­low­ing the dis­pute, the woman threat­ened to deal with the school ad­min­is­tra­tion. An­oth­er teacher said the school was built on a bur­ial site, but neigh­bours who live around the school de­nied that was so. A source at the school con­firmed that all 17 pupils were tak­en to the Princes Town Health Fa­cil­i­ty where they were med­ical­ly ex­am­ined. The oth­er stu­dents were sent home at 2 pm.

Re­spond­ing yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion Clifton de Coteau said he was aware that pupils had to be tak­en for med­ical at­ten­tion. De Coteau said Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vice of­fi­cials were sent to the school and stu­dents were ex­pect­ed to re­ceive coun­selling. A state­ment from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said the Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Cor­po­ra­tion (PTSC) made maxi taxis avail­able to the school to as­sist the Of­fice for Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM) which pro­vid­ed ad­di­tion­al am­bu­lances.