“Mad­ness, scary, ter­ri­fy­ing,” were the re­ac­tions of some par­ents to a bone-chill­ing threat to harm stu­dents and teach­ers of the Bar­rack­pore East Sec­ondary School.

Par­ents turned up at the school yes­ter­day morn­ing to take their chil­dren home af­ter learn­ing about the threat.

TTUTA, par­ents and school of­fi­cials said an email was sent to the school’s of­fi­cial email ad­dress and two teach­ers on Sun­day.

It stat­ed, “I promise every sin­gle soul will be dealt with ac­cord­ing­ly, teach­ers and stu­dents will be dealt with in a painful way ... I been plan­ning this since the new year. I am sure I will suc­ceed in mis­sion. I am com­ing for your school.”

While on­ly ten teach­ers and 200 stu­dents turned up for school, by 10 am yes­ter­day all class­es were sus­pend­ed as par­ents showed up to take their chil­dren home.

One par­ent Nicholas Man­rique said he was alert­ed to the sit­u­a­tion through one of the PTA’s What­sApp chat.

Man­rique said he might al­so keep his son home to­day, but that was just a tem­po­rary so­lu­tion to the re­cur­ring prob­lem.

“This is a norm be­cause not too long ago my daugh­ter’s school had a bomb threat. This is crazi­ness. It might just be kids play­ing but in the event that some­thing ac­tu­al­ly hap­pens, be­cause of the amount of firearms out there, I would not doubt it,” he said.

As she hur­ried through the rain with her daugh­ter, Kavi­ta Ram­nath ad­mit­ted that the sit­u­a­tion was ter­ri­fy­ing.

“Re­al­ly, re­al­ly scared, on­ly child and if some­thing was to hap­pen like this, I don’t know. But, re­al­ly scared, ter­ri­fy­ing,” she said.

An­oth­er par­ent Kester Ker­na­han said he did not know what to make of the threat be­cause there have been many pre­vi­ous false alarms, but he was not tak­ing any chances.

Mean­while, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin strong­ly con­demned the threats, de­scrib­ing it as an act of ter­ror­ism and trea­son. How­ev­er, he said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion de­cid­ed not to close the school, de­spite un­ease ex­pressed by the ad­min­is­tra­tion, teach­ers and par­ents.

“TTUTA be­lieves that in this day and age, any such threats should not be tak­en light­ly and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion as well as the Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice should take every pre­cau­tion to pre­serve the lives of the oc­cu­pants of the Bar­rack­pore East Sec­ondary School. TTUTA shud­ders to think if this threat was car­ried out and there was a loss of lives. Even one loss of life is one too many lost. An ounce of pre­ven­tion is greater than a pound of cure,” he said. He called on the TTPS Cy­ber Unit to launch a full-scale in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the “ghast­ly act” and bring those re­spon­si­ble to jus­tice.

Mean­while, Oropouche East MP and shad­ow min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal called for the strength­en­ing of the TTPS Cy­ber Crime Unit to pre­vent on­line threats.

He not­ed that the warn­ing was is­sued against the back­drop of T&T’s unchecked crime rate and the preva­lence of school shoot­ings in oth­er coun­tries.

“The school com­mu­ni­ty is un­der­stand­ably trau­ma­tised by the ter­ri­ble threat to kill every stu­dent and teacher of the in­sti­tu­tion,” he said.

While com­mend­ing the Bar­rack­pore Po­lice for in­sti­tut­ing pa­trols, he said ef­fec­tive mea­sures are need­ed.

“The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er must strength­en the Cy­ber and So­cial Me­dia Unit to stamp out dig­i­tal crimes. The num­ber of trained and ex­pe­ri­enced as­signed of­fi­cers must be in­creased to iden­ti­fy, col­lect and pre­serve on­line ev­i­dence through ad­vanced in­ves­ti­ga­tions,” Mooni­lal said.

He called on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to as­sign coun­sel­lors to help trau­ma­tised teach­ers and stu­dents of the school and en­sure that the School Sup­port Ser­vices pro­vide the nec­es­sary guid­ance, coun­selling and so­cial ser­vices to al­le­vi­ate the fears of the staff and stu­dents.

Ef­forts to con­tact Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

In March this year, just over 49 schools in the South East­ern dis­trict were evac­u­at­ed af­ter a threat was made. It fol­lowed a sim­i­lar in­ci­dent in April last year where threats were made to over 100 schools around the coun­try.