Derek Achong

Po­lice are search­ing for a 15-year-old stu­dent who stabbed a class­mate dur­ing a fight at the Rus­sell Lat­apy Sec­ondary School, Mor­vant, yes­ter­day.The Form Three stu­dent from Rock City, Laven­tille, whose un­cle is a well-known gang leader, had not been ar­rest­ed up to late yes­ter­day.Po­lice be­lieve that both the sus­pect and vic­tim, al­so 15, from Pel­i­can Ex­ten­sion, Mor­vant, are ju­nior mem­bers of gangs in their com­mu­ni­ties.

The al­ter­ca­tion that led to the stab­bing, po­lice said, had its roots in an on­go­ing feud be­tween the two ri­val gangs of which the stu­dents are mem­bers.Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, around 11.45 am, dur­ing the school's lunch hour, both stu­dents were walk­ing in a cor­ri­dor on one of the school blocks when they had an ar­gu­ment. Po­lice said the sus­pect drew a knife and stabbed his class­mate in his back.

Se­cu­ri­ty guards on du­ty at the school's Cipri­ani Street, Mor­vant, com­pound re­spond­ed with­in min­utes and ap­proached the stu­dents to sep­a­rate them. Up­on see­ing the guards, how­ev­er, the sus­pect re­port­ed­ly dropped the knife and ran away.The vic­tim was tak­en to Mor­vant Health Cen­tre where he was treat­ed and dis­charged for the stab wound which in­ves­ti­ga­tors de­scribed as su­per­fi­cial.

Yes­ter­day's in­ci­dent comes less than two days af­ter two stu­dents of Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do, were in­jured dur­ing a stab­bing at­tack at that school.In that in­ci­dent, a 14-year-old stu­dent stabbed his 15-year-old class­mate be­fore in­flict­ing sev­er­al wounds on his own wrist, fore­arms and the side of his neck, in an ap­par­ent sui­cide at­tempt.The in­ci­dent re­port­ed­ly stemmed from an ar­gu­ment over bul­ly­ing. Both stu­dents have since been dis­charged from hos­pi­tal.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, T&T Uni­fied Teacher's As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent De­vanand Sinanan said his or­gan­i­sa­tion strong­ly con­demned vi­o­lence in school and was con­cerned by both in­ci­dents.He said the two re­cent in­ci­dents should serve as an im­pe­tus for ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers to take mean­ing­ful ac­tion against vi­o­lence in schools, as pub­lic furore over such in­ci­dents usu­al­ly dis­si­pate less than a week af­ter it was re­port­ed by the me­dia and the prob­lem was for­got­ten.

He said teach­ers and school ad­min­is­tra­tors should not be blamed, how­ev­er, as they al­ready spent a lot of time deal­ing with in­dis­ci­pline and vi­o­lence, which re­duced the time left for teach­ing the aca­d­e­m­ic syl­labus."Schools did not cre­ate these cur­rent prob­lems, we are just forced to deal with them. We are try­ing our best," Sinanan said.