Gunmen enter Belmont school, threaten safety officer

A ROUTINE patrol for a Ministry of Education safety officer at Belmont Secondary School (formerly Belmont Junior Secondary School) on Friday could have ended far worse after coming face to face with two gunmen on the school compound.

The safety officer, who Newsday chose to keep anonymous for security reasons, spoke about the incident that happened around 9 am.

As a result of the incident, the school was dismissed before 10 am. The Belmont Police Station is located metres away from the school and officers arrived on the scene quickly. It is uncertain why the gunmen were on the school compound.

When Newsday visited the school after 11 am, the safety officer was visibly shaken.

He said, “I was doing one of my routine patrols on the compound to ensure that students are safe. I was heading east to the farm area and there was a blind spot to the building…when I turned the corner I just bumped into two gunmen.”

The safety officer initially thought it was students, but then realised otherwise.

“They had t-shirts over their faces…but I thought it was students so I was a bit surprised because we bumped into each other literally and then one of them shouted at me, ‘Who is you, who is you.’

"I looked down and realised they had pistols which looked like glocks.”

The safety officer said one of the men was aggressive.

“One of the men seemed on a next level. For some reason, he seemed to want my head so he was telling the other guy, bumping him and trying to tell him, ‘Give the man one quick.’”

This is when the safety officer put his hands in the air.

While all this was unfolding, a class was in progress nearby.

“There was a class going on next to me where the students were unaware of the situation. It was so eerie. I had to try and stay calm to not alert the gunmen in such a way because, when people are scared, they react to situations differently.”

The gunmen wanted the safety officer to go to the back of the building, but the latter refused. The gunmen told him to walk away and at this point he was expecting the worst and thinking about the lives of the students.

“I was just thinking about being shot in my back at this point. While I was walking away I was trying to alert students without verbal (remarks), but just doing hand signals. They weren’t as responsive as I would have liked, so then I had to shout at some point.

"The police response was good. I saw police about 200 metres away with their weapons drawn rushing onto the compound, but I don’t know how those guys escaped so quickly.”

President of the school’s parent-teacher association Shurlanda Malcolm said school officials had been asking the Ministry of Education for years to ensure the compound was properly fenced. At the back of the school people can easily gain access to the school from Lady Young Road.

“We have been asking the minister to fix that fence since 2016 and she is not listening to us at all,” Malcolm said.

“We will shut down the school until something is done for safety. The fence in the back there has a lot of holes in the fencing. (Does) somebody have to die before we get the fence fix or something?”

Malcolm said, “This guy (safety officer) could have lost his life here this morning.”

Ministry of Education responds

The situation at Belmont Secondary was not the only school incident on Friday as bomb threats were e-mailed to schools in TT, forcing students to be evacuated. A Ministry of Education media release said it "strongly condemns these reckless actions which destabilise our nation's schools and interrupt the education of our students. Anyone with relevant information is asked to contact the TT Police Service forthwith."

In Parliament on Friday, Minister of Eduction Dr Nyan Gadsby-Dolly addressed her concerns about the school incidents.

"In all cases, when the e-mail(s) was received as well as at the Belmont Secondary School, the principals and the teachers led the students out of the schools at the muster points and though thankfully there were no reports of any mass hysteria, the school social workers and guidance counsellors were on hand to hold small group meetings with the students."

Students who were more traumatised were given individual attention.