Chester Sam­bra­no

The po­lice have launched a crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to a fight which took place out­side the Barataria North Sec­ondary School on Mon­day.

It has been re­port­ed that sev­en stu­dents were am­bushed by 25 oth­ers as they left the school com­pound. Sev­er­al of them sus­tained in­juries, in­clud­ing one male stu­dent who is re­port­ed­ly in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at hos­pi­tal.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia on the mat­ter on Wednes­day, Se­nior Supt of the North East­ern Di­vi­sion, Win­ston Ma­haraj, said the po­lice re­ferred the in­jured stu­dents to the hos­pi­tal and will col­lect med­ical cer­tifi­cates on their be­half.

He al­so said he had made arrange­ments for state­ments to be record­ed by all par­ties in­volved and a file sub­mit­ted.

“And we will de­cide what di­rec­tion we are go­ing from there...In terms of crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings, if any crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings come by way of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, we will take the nec­es­sary ac­tion,” he said.

In the mean­time, Ma­haraj said oth­er in­ter­ven­tions would be made through the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice and the Vic­tims and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit (VW­SU) of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

He ex­plained that the com­mu­ni­ty po­lice will speak to the stu­dents in­volved and the gen­er­al school pop­u­la­tion, while the VW­SU will en­gage the in­jured chil­dren.

But while this is the work to be done, Ma­haraj had some strong words for the par­ents of the per­pe­tra­tors.

“Par­ents, get your act to­geth­er, don’t re­ly on the po­lice or oth­er au­thor­i­ties to do your job,” he said.

He lament­ed that par­ents need­ed to prop­er­ly so­cialise and dis­ci­pline their chil­dren be­cause how they be­have in pub­lic was a re­flec­tion of their homes.

That be­ing said, in in­stances like these, he said, “It is a fail­ure on the part of par­ent­ing.”

How­ev­er, Ma­haraj said the po­lice will do what is re­quired when re­quired.

He is al­so await­ing a re­port from the of­fi­cers of the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion on why there was not a pres­ence out­side the school when the in­ci­dent oc­curred, since it is one of the trou­ble schools on the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s list.

“Barataria South is one of the schools that I have de­tailed pa­trols to be present at the be­gin­ning and end of school every day. Now I am a bit wor­ried and trou­bled hear­ing this re­port on the news,” he said.

The fra­cas out­side the school was said to be an es­ca­la­tion of an in­ci­dent which took place in­side the school ear­li­er in the day.

Par­ents of the in­jured stu­dents are re­port­ed­ly an­gered by the sit­u­a­tion and the school’s han­dling of it and plan to take civ­il le­gal ac­tion.

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly for com­ment and an up­date on the mat­ter, but none was re­ceived up to late Wednes­day.