The Tribune

By SANCHESKA BROWN

Tribune Staff Reporter

sbrown@tribunemedia.net

A 16-year-old boy was stabbed in the neck during an argument at C R Walker Senior High School early yesterday morning.

The incident happened shortly before 11am.

Assistant Commissioner of Police Stephen Dean said the boy was rushed to hospital in serious condition but has since been stabilised.

Director of Education Lionel Sands said two boys were fighting over a video game when the argument escalated.

“I can confirm there was a stabbing at the school, a student got stabbed and police took a male, another student, into custody. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance and he is in serious (condition) but his condition is not listed as life threatening,” Mr Sands said.

“School officials as well as the Ministry (of Education) have done all we can to minimise that kind of violence on the school campus. Despite this incident we are satisfied that we have done all we can to prevent these type of things from happening. It is unfortunate that this incident happened and we understand it was over something simple. My information is that one of the boys took the other’s piece of technology, a video game I understand, and the fight started from there.

“We have not had this kind of incident in C R Walker in a long time. We have police on the ground, so they were able to break up the fight rather quickly.”

The Tribune understands both students are in the 11th grade. Calls to the school were not returned up to press time.

After the Christie administration won the 2012 general election, the School Policing Programme was reintroduced in government schools.

Earlier this year, Education Minister Jerome Fitzgerald said since the re-introduction of the programme, violence in public schools has become almost non-existent.

Mr Fitzgerald previously said there have been “minimum incidents” in the public school system for the past few years, “to the point where it is not even considered an issue facing our school system”.