Bloody Maldon……..Two students stabbed, one dead
MALDON, St James – A Grade 11 male student of the Maldon High School was stabbed to death outside the school’s gate yesterday afternoon, allegedly by the relative of another student who was stabbed and injured earlier on the school’s compound.
The dead student was identified as Cleon Levine, 16, of Granville in the parish.
Meanwhile, the student who was stabbed on the school’s compound, and whose identity was being withheld by the police, was said to be in serious condition in hospital.
According to the police, the first stabbing incident resulted from a dispute which involved two male students on the grounds of the school. It ended with one of the students using a knife to stab the other just below his left breast. The injured student was taken to hospital.
Sources at the troubled St James school told the Observer that the fatal stabbing occurred just outside the school compound shortly after the afternoon shift got underway.
School, however, remained in session and only a few students were seen milling around the area where the incident occurred. However, the pool of blood on the road was evidence of the grisly incident.
Irvin Atkinson, the school’s vice principal, yesterday expressed disappointment over the tragedy.
“It is a sad situation, that is all I can say, because I don’t know all the details. It is really a sad situation and it doesn’t speak well of the school, especially given the situation in recent times where the school was closed for two weeks in protest (over planned removal of principal),” Atkinson said.
A female student yesterday described Levine as ‘a very nice person’. “He was not a troublemaker. We feel bad, very bad. I think that if Mr Wilson (former principal) was here it wouldn’t happen,” said the student.
Another student said that since Derrick Wilson, provisional principal, has been sidelined by the school’s board and the Ministry of Education, discipline has broken down at the school.
“When Mr Wilson is here this couldn’t happen because when morning shift is over he would look at your epaulette and your tie and say go on home you have no reason to be here,” he said.
President of the school’s parents teachers association, Verlon Vernon, who noted that yesterday’s incidents made it the fifth case of stabbing since the start of the school year in September, echoed a similar sentiment.
“If you ask me (if it would have happened) if the principal, Mr Wilson was there, I would tell you no.”
“We want to appeal to the attorney-general or the powers that be, that concerns the case of Mr Wilson, for the sake and lives of our children and our school at Maldon, to hasten the date of the hearing so we can bring back stability to the school,” said the PTA president.
Wilson was appointed as provisional principal at the St James school two years ago, but the education ministry claimed that he had not met the criteria to be appointed to the job as principal.
In the meantime, the Supreme Court has barred the school board and the Ministry of Education from advertising the post of principal. The injunction, issued by Justice Roy Anderson, is to remain in force pending a resolution of the matter in the Constitutional Court in a judicial review.
Lawyers representing the Attorney-General’s Office have been seeking to have the court overrule the injunction.
The ministry, in the meantime, has installed a senior education officer, Devon Ruddock, to run the school.