An­na-Lisa Paul

Se­nior Re­porter

an­na-lisa.paul@guardian.co.tt

Class­es at Cunu­pia Sec­ondary went on as nor­mal yes­ter­day just hours af­ter a rob­bery and break-in at the school on Sun­day night when ban­dits shot at a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer and stole a quan­ti­ty of items, in­clud­ing the keys to sev­er­al class­rooms.

School of­fi­cials de­clined to com­ment on the in­ci­dent and di­rect­ed all ques­tions to the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion but stu­dents con­firmed that some­thing had hap­pened on the com­pound the night be­fore.

A group of male stu­dents, who spoke briefly with Guardian Me­dia around 11 am while staff were in a meet­ing, said they ar­rived at the school to find MTS guards break­ing the locks off the doors to class­rooms in the Form Five Block. Point­ing to five class­rooms which were oc­cu­pied, one of the boys said a sixth class­room in the main build­ing had al­so been af­fect­ed.

The armed in­trud­ers con­front­ed the lone MTS guard on du­ty at the school on Sun­day night, shoot­ing at him, ty­ing him up and break­ing in­to the main staff room.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion did not pro­vide any de­tails of the in­ci­dent but a se­nior MTS of­fi­cial said: “The mat­ter is un­der po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion so we are un­able to give any pub­lic state­ments at this time. How­ev­er the of­fi­cer af­fect­ed is re­ceiv­ing coun­selling and sup­port con­sis­tent with our poli­cies and pro­to­cols in these sit­u­a­tions.”

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly con­demned the in­ci­dent and ad­mit­ted: “This type of crim­i­nal act has, un­for­tu­nate­ly, oc­curred at schools be­fore.”

Gads­by-Dol­ly said she met with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty on the mat­ter of school se­cu­ri­ty.

“The TTPS has been asked to in­crease their pa­trols in the vicin­i­ty of schools to lend sup­port to the se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cers sta­tioned there,” she said.

“This lat­est in­ci­dent has been re­port­ed to the po­lice, and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion will of­fer what sup­port is avail­able to the vic­tim. We re­ly, as we must, on the TTPS to re­solve these mat­ters.”