KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Five Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary stu­dents have been sus­pend­ed fol­low­ing the as­sault of Port-of-Spain City Cor­po­ra­tion chair­man and al­der­man Wayne Grif­fith, which oc­curred dur­ing an in­ci­dent along Dun­don­ald Street, Port-of-Spain, on Mon­day.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) con­firmed the sus­pen­sions yes­ter­day, as in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the vi­ral at­tack con­tin­ue.

Ac­cord­ing to po­lice, Grif­fith at­tempt­ed to in­ter­vene in a fight among stu­dents when he was as­sault­ed by sev­er­al of them. He sus­tained in­juries and had to seek med­ical at­ten­tion. Po­lice al­so re­port­ed that some of his per­son­al be­long­ings went miss­ing dur­ing the in­ci­dent.

The as­sault, which was cap­tured on video and wide­ly cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia, has drawn con­dem­na­tion from Gov­ern­ment.

Min­is­ter of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Khadi­jah Ameen and Min­is­ter of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Roger Alexan­der ex­pressed con­cern over the in­ci­dent.

In a state­ment, Ameen said she at­tempt­ed to con­tact Grif­fith af­ter be­com­ing aware of the video, but reached his voice­mail and left a What­sApp mes­sage ex­press­ing con­cern. She al­so con­tact­ed Min­is­ter Alexan­der, who con­firmed the TTPS was ad­dress­ing the mat­ter.

Ameen de­scribed the in­ci­dent as trou­bling and called for the in­ves­ti­ga­tion to iden­ti­fy those re­spon­si­ble and en­sure ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion is tak­en. She al­so re­it­er­at­ed sup­port for pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to ad­dress school vi­o­lence and an­ti­so­cial be­hav­iour, not­ing that po­lice pres­ence in schools has con­tributed to a re­duc­tion in such in­ci­dents.

While stress­ing the need to await the out­come of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, she said she re­mained com­mit­ted to ef­forts pro­mot­ing safe­ty, re­spect and ci­vil­i­ty in schools and com­mu­ni­ties.

As­sis­tant Su­per­in­ten­dent Owie Rus­sell has since urged par­ents of the stu­dents in­volved to co­op­er­ate with in­ves­ti­ga­tors.

“I chal­lenge the par­ents who know, who are aware that their chil­dren were in­volved in that, to bring them to the po­lice sta­tion, to bring them in school and in­tro­duce them to the prin­ci­pal so that the po­lice could do a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion and let the chips fall where they may,” Rus­sell said.

At­tempts to con­tact Grif­fith were un­suc­cess­ful up to press time.