Ria Ram­bal­ly

While schools across the coun­try were be­ing evac­u­at­ed due to bomb threats yes­ter­day, Bel­mont Sec­ondary was fac­ing an­oth­er dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion af­ter two gun­men en­tered the com­pound.

School safe­ty of­fi­cer Sha­ka Wal­lace said class­es were in ses­sion around 9.14 am, when he de­cid­ed to make a rou­tine pa­trol around the com­pound and found him­self face-to-face with the gun­men.

Wal­lace re­called, “I was head­ing east to the farm area and there was a blind spot to the build­ing. When I turned the cor­ner, I just bumped in­to two guns.”

At first, Wal­lace said he thought it was stu­dents but when one of the armed men shout­ed, “Who is you? Who is you?” he re­alised they were out­siders with pis­tols.

Wal­lace said one of the men prompt­ed the oth­er to shoot him on the spot.

How­ev­er, Wal­lace said he quick­ly iden­ti­fied him­self as a Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion of­fi­cer and tried to stay as calm as he could in the cir­cum­stances.

The men even­tu­al­ly or­dered Wal­lace to an­oth­er part of the school.

Wal­lace re­called that as he was fol­low­ing the gun­men’s in­struc­tions, he tried to sig­nal stu­dents in class­es at the ground lev­el to seek safe­ty us­ing hand sig­nals.

How­ev­er, just when he thought he would be shot, he saw po­lice ve­hi­cles en­ter­ing the school in the dis­tance.

“I saw po­lice about 200 me­ters away with guns drawn and run­ning on­to the com­pound,” Wal­lace said, not­ing he felt the TTPS re­sponse was good.

The two men quick­ly es­caped, and Wal­lace sus­pects they left through one of the school’s many breach­es in its fenc­ing.

Pres­i­dent of the Bel­mont Sec­ondary Par­ent Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion, Shur­lan­da Mal­com, said the PTA has been ask­ing the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to fix the fence since 2016. “What we have to do? Like some­one have to die be­fore we get the fence fixed or some­thing?” she said.

De­scrib­ing Bel­mont Sec­ondary as a good school, Mal­com called on Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly to vis­it the com­pound in per­son and see how many holes were in its fenc­ing. She es­ti­mat­ed there could be about ten breach­es in to­tal.

“We will shut down the school un­til some­thing is be­ing done for that safe­ty,” Mal­com warned.

She told Guardian Me­dia the school was even­tu­al­ly evac­u­at­ed yes­ter­day, as the se­cu­ri­ty breach co­in­cid­ed with a bomb threat.

The school’s prin­ci­pal met with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion over the sit­u­a­tion and will ad­dress par­ents over what tran­spired.

Mean­while, the TTPS con­firmed it is in­ves­ti­gat­ing the as­sault of a school safe­ty of­fi­cer at the Bel­mont Sec­ondary School by two men.

Asked to re­spond to the in­ci­dent at Bel­mont Sec­ondary in the Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Gads­by-Dol­ly con­demned any ne­far­i­ous ac­tion to dis­rupt the na­tion’s schools. She said while no one was hurt and there was no mass hys­te­ria, guid­ance coun­sel­lors will pro­vide any ad­di­tion­al sup­port to stu­dents on Mon­day.