Police investigators have charged two male students of the St Elizabeth-based BB Coke High School after they reportedly stabbed each other with knives during a fight in the town of Junction in the parish last week.
The boys, aged 15 and 16, were charged with unlawful wounding, and both are to appear in the Santa Cruz Children’s Court later this week.
The St Elizabeth police said the stabbing incident resulted from an earlier altercation between the boys on the school compound, which escalated in the public sphere on streets in Junction later on Wednesday.
According to police reports, one of the schoolboys was allegedly involved in a dispute on the school compound. The other boy intervened because one of his friends was involved in that dispute.
Sometime after 3pm on Wednesday, the fight escalated on the streets of Junction, and the two schoolboys were seen stabbing each other with knives in a video that has since been heavily circulated.
The teenagers’ injuries were reportedly not life-threatening, and detectives interviewed them in the presence of their parents between Wednesday afternoon and Thursday.
They were both subsequently charged.
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Earlier this week, a 16-year-old male student of Tivoli Gardens High School in West Kingston was charged with assault occasioning bodily harm and malicious destruction of property after a viral video emerged with him and a 56-year-old female teacher engaged in a fight in a classroom at the institution.
The educator reportedly received minor injuries to sections of her body during the incident, the police said.
Calls have been growing for more interventions to stem violence in schools, especially with many students facing behavioural and other psychological issues that are suspected to be caused by the long break in face-to-face schooling as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the influence of social media.
