SASCHA WIL­SON

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

Po­lice are yet to de­ter­mine who was the ag­gres­sor in last Fri­day’s fight be­tween a teacher and stu­dent at the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School. An of­fi­cer said yes­ter­day that in­ves­ti­ga­tions were still in the pre­lim­i­nary stages.

The 16-year-old stu­dent was in­ter­viewed at the Moru­ga Po­lice Sta­tion yes­ter­day. Oth­er stu­dents who wit­nessed the fight were al­so in­ter­viewed at the sta­tion.

An of­fi­cer said they had not yet tak­en a state­ment from the 53-year-old teacher who re­turned to the hos­pi­tal yes­ter­day for fur­ther treat­ment for an in­jury to his nose.

Po­lice re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that the teacher had ear­li­er part­ed a fight be­tween the stu­dent and an­oth­er child in the school. The stu­dent has since been sus­pend­ed.

In an in­ter­view in front of the Moru­ga Po­lice Sta­tion yes­ter­day, a rel­a­tive came to the stu­dent’s de­fence.  He said the stu­dent is emo­tion­al­ly scarred hav­ing lost his par­ents at a young age. He grew up with his grand­moth­er.  The rel­a­tive claimed the teacher was the ag­gres­sor and the stu­dent re­tal­i­at­ed.

 “You all can see in the video that he re­strained him­self. Is more than three times he spoke be­fore the teacher fly up up­on him and cuff him. He was say­ing, how it will look if the teacher floor him on the ground. He said he would feel so shame to go back to the school.”   

The rel­a­tive called for the teacher to al­so be sus­pend­ed.

Mean­while, a Moru­ga res­i­dent who said he has been friends with the teacher for over 40 years said he would “go all out and do every­thing” to help every child or per­son in the vil­lage.

How­ev­er, the res­i­dent, who did not wish to be iden­ti­fied, claimed the teacher was ver­bal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly as­sault­ed by stu­dents in the past.

“I don’t think he did wrong. If you watch the videos... You see he tried to hold back the per­son at the time.”

He al­so ques­tioned why no one tried to stop the fight ear­li­er. He said the teacher has over 30 years of ser­vice. 

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly con­firmed that the min­istry re­ceived a pre­lim­i­nary re­port and was await­ing more de­tailed in­for­ma­tion on the in­ci­dent.

Of­fi­cers from the Moru­ga Po­lice Sta­tion are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.