Reporter
Carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt
The parents of a five-year-old boy who attends the Good Shepherd Anglican Primary School in Tunapuna are exploring their legal options, after their son was injured on the school’s compound on October 14.
The tips of the child’s middle and ring fingers were severed by a gate during the lunchtime period. His mother, Carla-Ann Hospedales-McLean, who was in tears, told Guardian Media yesterday that she still does not know what exactly happened to her son’s fingers.
“When the doctor opened it (the bandage), I almost passed out because his finger was gone,” she cried.
Recounting that day, Hospedales-McLean said she received a call from her son’s teacher informing her that he was injured and en route to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex, where she should meet them.
She said she arrived before the teacher and her son and was just happy to see him conscious, but she had no idea of the severity of the injury until her child took off the bandage. The mother said that was when both she and the doctors started asking what really happened.
“It was a rush; a lot of people came to his assistance, and they were trying to understand him, so he was being asked a lot of questions. Fortunately, he’s such a trooper; he was responding. From what he kept repeating, it was a game of tag in school, and his classmate, another five or six year old, pushed him violently, I guess, and there was a gate that didn’t have a physical mechanism to keep it secure, and my son’s hand was crushed in the process,” she explained.
Hospedales-McLean said doctors tried to save her child’s ring finger, but there were very deep lacerations; the bone on the middle finger was splintered, and his pinky finger had a lot of tissue damage.
“He was worked on after, unfortunately, the sedition failed, so my son experienced a lot of the process and the pain, so there’s a huge psychosocial impact, and he’s struggling to understand how his finger is going to grow back,” she said.
The mother, whose other children also attended the Good Shepherd Primary School, said she tried to get information from the principal about what happened, but her attempts were unsuccessful until she lodged a complaint through the ombudsman’s office for failure to communicate.
“His father would have tried to engage the school directly on Wednesday and Thursday. There was a less than favourable response; I would possibly say no response,” she said.
Hospedales-McLean said they had to get the Ministry of Education’s Accident Incident Report form, which was online, for the school because he was told the principal was not available.
“There was no supervision at that point in time; it seems like they are relying on information from other five and six-year-olds,” she said.
The principal reportedly told the mother that her son was not pushed maliciously but accidentally during a game of tag. The Ministry of Education received the same information.
Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly said, “The report received about this unfortunate incident stated that during play, some children bumped into an open gate, which was pushed close and squeezed the fingers of one child, which caused one of the tips to be severed.”
The Education Minister said the gate was not reported as defective, but based on the incident, site visits were made by officials of the School Board and the Facilities Division of the Ministry to determine what adjustments can be made to the existing infrastructure to mitigate against another such outcome.
Hospedales-McLean said she received a different version of events and will not be sending her son back to the school.
“He keeps asking if his blood is still on the gate,” she said.
She added that she was also exploring her legal options.