Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Isn't that ter­ri­ble? That was Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's re­sponse when asked about his thoughts about Fri­day's dead­ly mass shoot­ing at the Sandy Hook El­e­men­tary School, Con­necti­cut. Re­ports are that the gun­man killed 20 chil­dren and six adults be­fore killing him­self. Row­ley is al­so fear­ful that some­one here can copy what hap­pened in Con­necti­cut. He said the out­rage was go­ing around the world. There was al­so an in­ci­dent in Bei­jing, Chi­na, where a knife-wield­ing man slashed 22 chil­dren and an adult at an el­e­men­tary school.

The man at­tacked the chil­dren at the gate of a school in Chen­peng vil­lage in Henan province. Row­ley said, "As a par­ent it has me feel­ing so de­pressed be­cause I feel for the par­ents who got that phone call and for a small com­mu­ni­ty to lose 20 chil­dren in that hor­ren­dous way...I could un­der­stand what they're go­ing through and just be thank­ful that it hasn't hap­pened to us or to me per­son­al­ly be­cause I can't think of any­thing worse to hap­pen to a fam­i­ly than to have a young one be­ing mur­dered." He was speak­ing at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day where the PNM held its an­nu­al Christ­mas par­ty for se­nior cit­i­zens.

Row­ley said the killings have been on his mind "all the time." He said peo­ple in T&T should spare their thoughts for the vic­tims and their fam­i­lies and ex­press their deep­est sym­pa­thies. "We have a lot of fam­i­ly mem­bers in the Unit­ed States and even though it is not in our com­mu­ni­ty here I am sure we all can share the pain," he said. He said his fear was that T&T was ex­posed to copy­cat type ex­pres­sions and that the com­mu­ni­ca­tion and en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­tries "bring every­thing to us."

He said that kind of de­vel­op­ment (killings) has to be elim­i­nat­ed and that peo­ple should not think that it will not or could not hap­pen here. Row­ley said, "This type of killing of peo­ple in schools and uni­ver­si­ties seems to be the lat­est kind of ex­pres­sion of out­rage so even though it hasn't hap­pened here we have to be care­ful that some­one in our com­mu­ni­ty doesn't copy what oth­ers have done to be­come fa­mous."