RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Three stu­dents from the Pe­nal Sec­ondary School suf­fered stab wounds af­ter be­ing at­tacked by a sus­pend­ed school­mate dur­ing a bazaar at Par­vati Girls’ High School in Debe on Sat­ur­day.

Po­lice said a fight broke out in the dis­co area at 6 pm, fol­low­ing which a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old boy were tak­en to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal with in­juries to their hands. Po­lice said the 16-year-old re­ceived stitch­es, while the 17-year-old may re­quire surgery.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors said the sus­pect, who was sus­pend­ed from the Pe­nal Sec­ondary School, used a penknife hid­den un­der the tongue of his shoe to car­ry out the at­tack.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Sanatan Dhar­ma Ma­ha Sab­ha Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Vi­jay Ma­haraj said the event had am­ple se­cu­ri­ty, in­clud­ing elec­tron­ic scan­ners, but the weapon went un­de­tect­ed.

“There were over ten se­cu­ri­ty guards, six po­lice of­fi­cers, some of them armed. The scan­ners were work­ing, but he hid the knife un­der the tongue of his shoe, and that missed the scan­ner,” Ma­haraj said in a tele­phone in­ter­view.

He said the sus­pect en­tered the com­pound and tar­get­ed three stu­dents, ac­cus­ing them of get­ting him sus­pend­ed.

“One of them came in by him­self. There was a ruckus be­tween four of them. He pulled out a penknife and at­tacked the oth­er three fel­las, stab­bing them in the arm.”

Ma­haraj said po­lice re­spond­ed im­me­di­ate­ly, and an am­bu­lance was present.

“The cam­eras picked him up. We lat­er found out he is on sus­pen­sion now, and he ac­cused the oth­er three of get­ting him sus­pend­ed.”

The sus­pect re­mained at large up to yes­ter­day, with Oropouche and San Fer­nan­do CID of­fi­cers search­ing for him.

Ma­haraj said the school’s prin­ci­pal is ex­pect­ed to is­sue a let­ter to par­ents to­day ex­plain­ing the sit­u­a­tion. In­ves­ti­ga­tions are con­tin­u­ing.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said the mat­ter is cur­rent­ly be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the po­lice. She said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion will await the re­port to de­ter­mine what fur­ther ac­tion is re­quired.