Staff and stu­dents at Pa­lo Seco Sec­ondary School were left in shock on Wednes­day morn­ing af­ter jan­i­tor Jen­nifer Har­ring­ton, 53, col­lapsed and died while on du­ty.

Around 7.15 am, Har­ring­ton was sweep­ing the com­pound when she sud­den­ly fell to the ground. Her daugh­ter, Ja­da Har­ring­ton, 21, who works as an OJT at the school, was near­by and tried to per­form CPR, but her ef­forts were un­suc­cess­ful. Emer­gency re­spon­ders al­so at­tempt­ed to re­sus­ci­tate her but could not.

Ja­da told in­ves­ti­ga­tors her moth­er was not known to be suf­fer­ing from any ail­ments.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion lat­er is­sued a state­ment ex­tend­ing con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly.

“The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion ex­tends heart­felt con­do­lences on the pass­ing of Ms Jen­nifer Har­ring­ton, Tem­po­rary Clean­er at Pa­lo Seco Sec­ondary School, whose ser­vice and pres­ence left a mean­ing­ful im­pact on the school com­mu­ni­ty.

Ms Har­ring­ton served with ded­i­ca­tion, kind­ness and hu­mil­i­ty, en­sur­ing that stu­dents and staff had a clean and safe en­vi­ron­ment in which to learn and work. In her time at Pa­lo Seco Sec­ondary, she quick­ly be­came part of the school fam­i­ly, al­ways ready with a warm smile and a help­ing hand for both staff and pupils.”

The min­istry added that Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices would con­tin­ue to pro­vide coun­selling to staff and stu­dents.

Class­es were dis­missed ear­ly fol­low­ing the in­ci­dent.