Armed men stormed Mal­ick Sec­ondary School in Mor­vant and robbed se­cu­ri­ty guards on du­ty on Sun­day.

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials con­firmed that the rob­bery took place around mid­day, while two guards were on du­ty at the school, lo­cat­ed off the La­dy Young Road.

While it re­mains un­clear how the sus­pects gained ac­cess to the premis­es, se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel re­port­ed a hole in the perime­ter fenc­ing and cit­ed poor light­ing as an ur­gent se­cu­ri­ty con­cern.

Guardian Me­dia learned that al­though the sus­pects stole a cell­phone from one of the guards, they did not at­tempt to break in­to the school’s of­fices or cafe­te­ria, nor did they dam­age any oth­er prop­er­ty.

Of­fi­cials said an in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing and the vic­tims have been re­ferred to the Vic­tim and Wit­ness Sup­port Unit for coun­selling.

Po­lice are urg­ing any­one with in­for­ma­tion about the in­ci­dent to come for­ward to as­sist with the in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Ex­press­ing con­cern about the rob­bery yes­ter­day, Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin said the union was “mind­ful and thank­ful that the rob­bery took place at a time when ed­u­ca­tors and stu­dents were not on the com­pound.”

While ac­knowl­edg­ing the trau­mat­ic im­pact on the se­cu­ri­ty guards, Lum Kin added: “This act demon­strates that there are in­di­vid­u­als who do not re­spect the sanc­ti­ty of our na­tion’s schools.”

He called for col­lab­o­ra­tion among all sec­tors of so­ci­ety—in­clud­ing non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions, faith-based groups, and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions—to curb the vi­o­lent acts threat­en­ing spaces meant for learn­ing.

“A unit­ed front is ur­gent­ly need­ed to bring about the change re­quired,” Lum Kin said.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred hours be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced sweep­ing se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures for high-risk schools start­ing from the new school term.

Speak­ing dur­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) meet­ing in Pe­nal on Mon­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar reaf­firmed her Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to tack­ling school vi­o­lence.

The Prime Min­is­ter said she had asked Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Michael Dowlath to com­pile a list of high-risk schools, us­ing var­i­ous cri­te­ria set by the min­istry, in­clud­ing sci­en­tif­ic da­ta on stu­dent sus­pen­sions and record­ed in­juries.