A 16-year-old stu­dent of the Va­len­cia Sec­ondary School is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear in court to­day, charged with mar­i­jua­na pos­ses­sion and pos­ses­sion of a weapon.

The stu­dent who lives at Long Cir­cu­lar in St James was held around 8.20 am on Mon­day, whilst on the school com­pound.

A uni­formed po­lice of­fi­cer on foot pa­trol at the school, found that the Form Four stu­dent was be­hav­ing sus­pi­cious­ly and told the school’s safe­ty of­fi­cer and prin­ci­pal that he want­ed to car­ry out a search of the stu­dent and his school­bag.

It was re­port­ed that whilst es­cort­ing the stu­dent to the prin­ci­pal’s of­fice, the of­fi­cer saw the stu­dent hand over his rag to a class­mate.

Tak­ing pos­ses­sion of the rag, the of­fi­cer opened it and dis­cov­ered 15 clear plas­tic bags con­tain­ing mar­i­jua­na, con­cealed in it.

The drugs were lat­er weighed and amount­ed to ten grams.

The of­fi­cer then searched the stu­dent and found a pock­et knife ap­prox­i­mate­ly four inch­es long in his pock­et.

The prin­ci­pal con­tact­ed the Va­len­cia Po­lice Sta­tion for fur­ther as­sis­tance, and re­spond­ing of­fi­cers took the stu­dent to the San­gre Grande Po­lice Sta­tion, and his moth­er was con­tact­ed.

The stu­dent and his moth­er were lat­er tak­en to the San­gre Grande Hos­pi­tal, where a med­ical cer­tifi­cate was ob­tained for the stu­dent be­fore he was tak­en to the Book­ing Cen­tre at Mara­cas, St Joseph.

Le­gal ad­vice was ob­tained on his be­half.

—An­na-Lisa Paul