Carisa Lee Re­porter

Re­porter

Carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

The par­ents of a five-year-old boy who at­tends the Good Shep­herd An­gli­can Pri­ma­ry School in Tu­na­puna are ex­plor­ing their le­gal op­tions, af­ter their son was in­jured on the school’s com­pound on Oc­to­ber 14.

The tips of the child’s mid­dle and ring fin­gers were sev­ered by a gate dur­ing the lunchtime pe­ri­od. His moth­er, Car­la-Ann Hospedales-McLean, who was in tears, told Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day that she still does not know what ex­act­ly hap­pened to her son’s fin­gers.

“When the doc­tor opened it (the ban­dage), I al­most passed out be­cause his fin­ger was gone,” she cried.

Re­count­ing that day, Hospedales-McLean said she re­ceived a call from her son’s teacher in­form­ing her that he was in­jured and en route to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, where she should meet them.

She said she ar­rived be­fore the teacher and her son and was just hap­py to see him con­scious, but she had no idea of the sever­i­ty of the in­jury un­til her child took off the ban­dage. The moth­er said that was when both she and the doc­tors start­ed ask­ing what re­al­ly hap­pened.

“It was a rush; a lot of peo­ple came to his as­sis­tance, and they were try­ing to un­der­stand him, so he was be­ing asked a lot of ques­tions. For­tu­nate­ly, he’s such a troop­er; he was re­spond­ing. From what he kept re­peat­ing, it was a game of tag in school, and his class­mate, an­oth­er five or six year old, pushed him vi­o­lent­ly, I guess, and there was a gate that didn’t have a phys­i­cal mech­a­nism to keep it se­cure, and my son’s hand was crushed in the process,” she ex­plained.

Hospedales-McLean said doc­tors tried to save her child’s ring fin­ger, but there were very deep lac­er­a­tions; the bone on the mid­dle fin­ger was splin­tered, and his pinky fin­ger had a lot of tis­sue dam­age.

“He was worked on af­ter, un­for­tu­nate­ly, the sedi­tion failed, so my son ex­pe­ri­enced a lot of the process and the pain, so there’s a huge psy­choso­cial im­pact, and he’s strug­gling to un­der­stand how his fin­ger is go­ing to grow back,” she said.

The moth­er, whose oth­er chil­dren al­so at­tend­ed the Good Shep­herd Pri­ma­ry School, said she tried to get in­for­ma­tion from the prin­ci­pal about what hap­pened, but her at­tempts were un­suc­cess­ful un­til she lodged a com­plaint through the om­buds­man’s of­fice for fail­ure to com­mu­ni­cate.

“His fa­ther would have tried to en­gage the school di­rect­ly on Wednes­day and Thurs­day. There was a less than favourable re­sponse; I would pos­si­bly say no re­sponse,” she said.

Hospedales-McLean said they had to get the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s Ac­ci­dent In­ci­dent Re­port form, which was on­line, for the school be­cause he was told the prin­ci­pal was not avail­able.

“There was no su­per­vi­sion at that point in time; it seems like they are re­ly­ing on in­for­ma­tion from oth­er five and six-year-olds,” she said.

The prin­ci­pal re­port­ed­ly told the moth­er that her son was not pushed ma­li­cious­ly but ac­ci­den­tal­ly dur­ing a game of tag. The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion re­ceived the same in­for­ma­tion.

Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “The re­port re­ceived about this un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent stat­ed that dur­ing play, some chil­dren bumped in­to an open gate, which was pushed close and squeezed the fin­gers of one child, which caused one of the tips to be sev­ered.”

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter said the gate was not re­port­ed as de­fec­tive, but based on the in­ci­dent, site vis­its were made by of­fi­cials of the School Board and the Fa­cil­i­ties Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry to de­ter­mine what ad­just­ments can be made to the ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture to mit­i­gate against an­oth­er such out­come.

Hospedales-McLean said she re­ceived a dif­fer­ent ver­sion of events and will not be send­ing her son back to the school.

“He keeps ask­ing if his blood is still on the gate,” she said.

She added that she was al­so ex­plor­ing her le­gal op­tions.