Students to be indefinitely suspended after viral fight

Three stu­dents are ex­pect­ed to be placed on ex­tend­ed in­def­i­nite sus­pen­sion pend­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to a fight which was cap­tured on video and cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial me­dia.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice said the in­ci­dent oc­curred be­tween 2.30 pm and 3.30 pm on Wednes­day near a sec­ondary school in Ch­agua­nas.

Ac­cord­ing to a TTPS me­dia re­lease, of­fi­cers as­signed to the Cen­tral Di­vi­sion vis­it­ed the school on Thurs­day, where they met with the prin­ci­pal and the School Safe­ty Of­fi­cer, who is con­duct­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the mat­ter.

Po­lice said in­for­ma­tion re­ceived in­di­cat­ed that three stu­dents of the in­sti­tu­tion were in­volved in the al­ter­ca­tion. One stu­dent was al­leged­ly seen kick­ing the vic­tim in the head while he was on the ground.

The stu­dents in­volved were re­port­ed­ly ab­sent from school to­day and school of­fi­cials have since con­tact­ed their par­ents.

Po­lice iden­ti­fied the vic­tim as a 14 year old stu­dent of an­oth­er Cen­tral sec­ondary school. In­ves­ti­ga­tors said he was trans­port­ed home by taxi af­ter the in­ci­dent be­fore lat­er seek­ing med­ical at­ten­tion at the Ch­agua­nas Med­ical Fa­cil­i­ty.

He was sub­se­quent­ly trans­ferred to the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, where he re­ceived treat­ment and was dis­charged.

Pre­lim­i­nary en­quiries sug­gest the al­ter­ca­tion stemmed from ex­changes and ban­ter on so­cial me­dia be­tween the par­ties in­volved.

In the re­lease, the TTPS urged stu­dents and par­ents to ex­er­cise re­spon­si­ble use of so­cial me­dia and seek peace­ful con­flict res­o­lu­tion, warn­ing that acts of vi­o­lence can have se­ri­ous le­gal and per­son­al con­se­quences.