Loyse Vin­cent

Bish­op’s High School at Mount Marie Road, Scar­bor­ough, was put un­der ‘lock­down’ on Wednes­day af­ter­noon and po­lice were called in af­ter in­for­ma­tion sur­faced that stu­dents from an­oth­er school, car­ry­ing a gun, were at­tempt­ing to en­ter the com­pound.

Po­lice re­ports reach­ing To­ba­go To­day in­di­cate that around mid­day the se­cu­ri­ty guard, as­signed to Bish­op’s, ob­served a group of five males wear­ing Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School uni­forms on the out­skirts of the school at­tempt­ing to en­ter the com­pound from the play­ing field area. That sec­tion is un­fenced as the play­ing field is cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion.

The re­port said the guard then alert­ed the prin­ci­pal who put the school on lock­down and no­ti­fied the po­lice.

One par­ent, who does not want to be iden­ti­fied, re­port­ed what she saw when vis­it­ing the school.

“I went to the school to car­ry a fold­er to my son, as he had for­got­ten it at home, but when I ar­rived at the school at around 1.30 pm, all the gates were locked. There were po­lice of­fi­cers out­side and I was told I could not go in.”

The to­tal lock­down re­mained in ef­fect un­til school was dis­missed at 2.50 pm. Po­lice of­fi­cers re­mained on the scene.

Ef­forts to reach BHS prin­ci­pal Cindy Ram­nar­ine for com­ment were un­suc­cess­ful, as To­ba­go To­day was told she was on the com­pound but not in her of­fice at that time.

To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Kelvin Charles, who is al­so re­spon­si­ble for the Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion, said the re­port was very trou­bling. How­ev­er, he told To­ba­go To­day in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that there was no fight or ev­i­dence of a gun.

“Pre­lim­i­nary re­ports sug­gest that stu­dents (boys) dressed in Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School uni­forms were wait­ing out­side the com­pound of the Bish­op’s High School, pre­sum­ably to at­tack two boys from the school. The prin­ci­pal was alert­ed to the sit­u­a­tion and took ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion to en­sure the phys­i­cal safe­ty of the stu­dents at the school and the po­lice was sum­moned.”

Charles said he has re­quest­ed a de­tailed re­port of the in­ci­dent.

Ag. Se­nior Su­per­in­ten­dent Jef­frey George, of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice’s To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, con­firmed that in­for­ma­tion on a gun on the school’s field was a ru­mour.

“We have been see­ing re­ports of guns be­ing in­volved but we have no re­port of that. Our re­ports show that some stu­dents were near the school to fight oth­er stu­dents,” George told To­ba­go To­day.

Mean­while, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) To­ba­go rep­re­sen­ta­tive Or­lan­do Kerr said he too is await­ing a re­port on the in­ci­dent.

How­ev­er, he said: “I would like to ve­he­ment­ly con­demn any ac­tion or even idea of en­ter­ing a school com­pound with the in­tent to cause harm. If the re­ports are true, these in­di­vid­u­als should be met with the full ex­tent of the law be­cause a school is a safe space,” Kerr said.