Police arrest student for setting off scratch bombs

LIGHTNING never strikes twice the same place, but scratch bombs do.

Like yesterday at the Tabaquite Secondary School when the same students who, on November 2, were injured by scratch bombs, suffered the same fate in a similar incident. Police swooped down at the school and attempted to arrest a student who resisted and left the school compound.

He was later arrested at his home and was, up to late yesterday, in custody at the Brasso station. Another student, who police suspect was also involved in yesterday’s second scratch bomb incident, is being sought.

Skyla Paul, 13, a Form Two pupil, still suffers from nerve damage to the ear-drum after the November 2 incident, and yesterday when a student exploded another scratch bomb, she went into “shock”. Her classmate, Briana Mungal, 14, had suffered a panic attack and hyperventilated in the first incident.

Yesterday, Mungal told Newsday she almost fainted and began to breathe heavily. School principal Sherry Ann Boodram, in confirming yesterday’s incident, said that the school’s administration is working with the Brasso police to find the “culprit” who set off yesterday’s explosive.

Mungal was taken to the Tabaquite Health Centre where she was treated.

Police told Newsday that they visited the school yesterday morning with members of the Child Protection Unit, to arrest a student arising from investigations into the first scratch bomb incident.

In the latest incident yesterday, Mungal was walking towards the cafeteria during the lunch break when a student detonated a scratch bomb. Mungal told Newsday: “The bomb went off and I jump up. I feel my chest starting to pound. I felt like I wanted to faint.”

Paul’s mother, who spoke to Newsday on condition of anonymity, said her daughter was in the auditorium when the bomb exploded.

“She started to feel her ears ringing and started to feel dizzy. I didn’t want the ambulance to take her because I had already taken her to an ENT (ear, nose and throat) specialist.”

She said when she spoke to the doctor yesterday about how the second scratch bomb affected her daughter, he advised that she continue to use the ear drops and pain killers he had prescribed.

Newsday was told that the setting off of scratch bombs at the school, is by no means an indictment against the security guards or the school’s administration.

Students are being adequately searched, but they are hiding scratch bombs in their underwear. They are also throwing them over the school’s fence, only to retrieve them afterwards.