KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has con­firmed that the stu­dent in­volved in a vi­o­lent al­ter­ca­tion with a teacher at the Moru­ga Sec­ondary School will face sus­pen­sion.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian, Gads­by-Dol­ly said, “A pre­lim­i­nary re­port was sub­mit­ted. A more de­tailed re­port has been re­quest­ed and will be sub­mit­ted ear­ly next week. A po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion is al­so on­go­ing. The stu­dent will be sus­pend­ed.”

She stat­ed that fur­ther ac­tion would be de­ter­mined based on sub­se­quent re­ports and a full in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

As­sis­tant Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice (ACP) South Wayne Mys­tar has con­firmed that the po­lice are ac­tive­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing the in­ci­dent, which was cap­tured on mo­bile phones by stu­dents and has since gone vi­ral on so­cial me­dia.

Mys­tar told the Sun­day Guardian that of­fi­cers are in pos­ses­sion of the footage and that he has in­struct­ed his team to vis­it the school to­mor­row to in­ter­view the prin­ci­pal, the in­di­vid­u­als in­volved, stu­dents, and wit­ness­es.

“This type of be­hav­iour will not be tol­er­at­ed. We will be con­duct­ing a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to this mat­ter,” Mys­tar as­sert­ed.

The shock­ing videos de­pict a phys­i­cal con­fronta­tion be­tween a male stu­dent and a male teacher, with both ex­chang­ing blows be­fore tum­bling to the ground. Stu­dents and staff made sev­er­al at­tempts to in­ter­vene.

In one clip, the stu­dent is heard claim­ing that the teacher punched him in the face, say­ing he was “not tak­ing that.” An­oth­er clip shows the teacher bleed­ing from his nose, with vis­i­ble bruis­es on his cheek and lip.

Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that this was the sec­ond vi­o­lent in­ci­dent be­tween a teacher and a stu­dent at the school with­in a week.

TTUTA ex­pressed deep con­cern over sit­u­a­tion

Mean­while, the T&T Uni­fied Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) has ex­pressed deep con­cern over the sit­u­a­tion. TTUTA pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin cau­tioned against rush­ing to con­clu­sions based sole­ly on the vi­ral videos, warn­ing that edit­ed snip­pets could mis­rep­re­sent the full con­text of the al­ter­ca­tion.

“We were re­li­ably in­formed that both in­di­vid­u­als were treat­ed at health fa­cil­i­ties. The in­ves­ti­ga­tions have start­ed, and we ap­peal to all to al­low the re­sults of such to be con­clud­ed and the rel­e­vant ac­tions tak­en,” Lum Kin stat­ed.

He stressed that the in­ci­dent un­der­scores the ur­gent need for mean­ing­ful in­ter­ven­tion at the school, com­mu­ni­ty, and home lev­els.