CLAREMONT, St Ann – Stunned by the stabbing death of a student, Education Minister Andrew Holness yesterday called urgently on school administrators and parents to step up searches of children for offensive weapons.

Holness’ request came within hours of the incident, as Steer Town, St Ann reeled in shock from the stabbing of Garran Jones, a 16-year-old Grade 11 student of Ferncourt High School in the parish.

“I am very disappointed and disturbed at what has happened. My heart goes out to the parents of that student who was killed,” said a sad-faced Holness as he pleaded for more searches at schools.

School had barely started with some classes just finishing Devotion when a public passenger vehicle operating as a school bus reportedly drove onto the compound yesterday to drop off students.

Police said a boy allegedly from the Marcus Garvey Technical High School managed to slip pass security personnel, made his way to Jones’ classroom where he confronted and stabbed him.

Jones reportedly used a chair to defend himself and ran from the classroom but was chased onto the playfield where he was again stabbed. He collapsed and was rushed to the St Ann’s Bay Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

Police said Jones received knife wounds to his chest and back just after 8:30 in the morning. Investigators believe the killing was a result of a feud between students of both schools.

Police were last night searching for two siblings, one a schoolmate of Jones, and the other a student at Marcus Garvey, in connection with the incident that plunged Ferncourt High into mourning.

Classes were disrupted after parents began pulling their children out of school, but normality is expected to resume today, a school spokesman said.

Yesterday, counsellors from the Ministry of Education as well as guidance counsellors from various schools were sent to Ferncourt to provide counselling to horrified teachers and students.

At the same time, the police promised to step up their surveillance of school children across the parish.

And several parents of Ferncourt students who turned up at the school to pick up their children following the incident, called for better security measures at the institution. They chided the school’s administration for allowing vehicles onto the school compound without being searched.

“It can’t be that the principal is going to allow buses to leave the students inside as he doesn’t know what the students are carrying in their bags or who else are in the vehicle; they need to be searched,” said one obliviously distraught parent.

Minister Holness, meanwhile, pleaded with principals and teachers to conduct searches as regularly as possible. “Work with your local police to do random searches. That’s the only way we are going to solve this problem,” he told reporters yesterday.

Security, he said, was one of his top priorities for schools and that the possession of weapons was his “greatest challenge”, and urged principals to treat the matter of knife possession as a criminal offence.

“What is illegal in the society is illegal in the school and the school should treat it as illegal,” he added.

The minister also urged parents and guardians to “check your children to see what they are taking to school”. Holness said his ministry was close to signing a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of National Security as to exactly how each should proceed in dealing with matters of security at the nation’s public schools.

– Additional reporting by Luke Douglas