KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

One day af­ter be­ing ex­pelled, a teenage stu­dent of the Williamsville Sec­ondary School has been for­mal­ly slapped with two charges fol­low­ing the stab­bing of a school­mate on Mon­day.

WPC Black­man of the South­ern Di­vi­sion yes­ter­day read charges of wound­ing with in­tent to cause gre­vi­ous bod­i­ly harm and pos­ses­sion of a weapon to the stu­dent at the Princes Town Po­lice Sta­tion.

The stu­dent is will ap­pear vir­tu­al­ly be­fore a mag­is­trate soon to an­swer the charges.

The 15-year-old school­girl was ar­rest­ed for a knife at­tack on her school­mate at the Williamsville Junc­tion on Mon­day.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion an­nounced on Wednes­day that the stu­dent was be­ing ex­pelled from the school for the at­tack.

Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion Of­fi­cer for the Po­lice Ser­vice, ASP Sheri­don Hill, con­firmed that the sus­pect was at the Ju­ve­nile Book­ing Cen­tre at the Oropouche Po­lice Sta­tion yes­ter­day.

Hill said the in­ves­ti­gat­ing team of of­fi­cers had to fol­low sev­er­al pro­ce­dures be­fore lay­ing the charges.

Mean­while, doc­tors at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal dis­charged the 15-year-old vic­tim from the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day.

The stu­dent spent three days get­ting treat­ment for stab wounds on her face, chest and arms.

The fight be­tween the Form Two stu­dents out­side the school oc­curred around 2.35 pm on Mon­day.

Video footage from a stu­dent’s phone showed a fight in­volv­ing sev­er­al stu­dents. An­oth­er showed blood drip­ping from the vic­tim’s face.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion said it chose to ex­pel the sus­pect based on the heinous na­ture of the ac­tion.

The Con­cerned Par­ents Move­ment (CPMTT) says po­lice should in­ves­ti­gate all sides of the fight. There were vary­ing re­ports of an on­go­ing rift be­tween both stu­dents and dif­fer­ent claims on who was the ag­gres­sor.

CPMTT pres­i­dent Clarence Men­doza said in­ves­ti­ga­tors need to ques­tion whether the armed stu­dent brought the knife for pro­tec­tion or it was pre­med­i­tat­ed, or whether a school­mate hand­ed her the weapon dur­ing the fight as stat­ed.

“We are of the view that there are two sides to the sto­ry and then that of the pairs. There should be an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of all sides,” Men­doza said.

CPMTT be­lieves that in deal­ing with school in­dis­ci­pline, there should be no ex­pul­sion of stu­dents. Men­doza said there should be re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion in­stead.

The CPMTT’s so­lu­tion to in­dis­ci­pline among sec­ondary school stu­dents in­cludes send­ing them to a des­ig­nat­ed boot camp for 30 days for a first of­fence with one vis­it from rel­a­tives.

A sec­ond of­fence car­ries a lock-up for 90 days with no vis­i­tors. Ad­di­tion­al of­fences or ha­bit­u­al of­fend­ers should go to a spe­cial­ly-de­signed boot camp that em­pha­sis­es on men­tal health is­sues.

It should in­clude coun­selling, anger man­age­ment and tech­ni­cal vo­ca­tion­al train­ing.

Af­ter this, the stu­dents must un­der­go rein­te­gra­tion pro­grammes to re­turn to so­ci­ety.

The CPMTT says these booth camps should fall un­der the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in part­ner­ship with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

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