MARTHA BRAE, Trelawny — A week after parents admitted to the Sunday Observer that they encourage their children to take weapons to school to defend themselves while heading home, a 16-year-old grade 10 student at William Knibb Memorial High School in this parish was stabbed to death on Monday during a dispute with his classmate, allegedly over a stolen ‘guard’ ring.

The dead student — Khamal Hall of a Deeside, Trelawny, address — was the goalkeeper of the school’s football team that competed in the recent daCosta Cup competition.

His 16-year-old classmate has since been taken into police custody. The police confirmed that they have the ring and the murder weapon in their possession.

When the Jamaica Observer visited the school Monday afternoon, several teachers wept openly during a counselling session with a team from the Ministry of Education.

“Totally devastated! We have never had any incident like this before and we are really trying to cope,” a visibly shaken Acting Principal Audrey Steele told reporters.

She noted that the incident occurred five minutes into the lunch break when an altercation developed between Hall and the classmate who had accused Hall of stealing a ring from a friend near the school canteen.

A knife was later brought into play and Hall was reportedly stabbed twice. He was rushed to Falmouth Public General Hospital where he succumbed to his injuries while undergoing treatment.

The atmosphere at the front of the Accident and Emergency section of the hospital was equally sombre, as Hall’s mother, brother, other family members, and residents cried uncontrollably.

The mother of the student accused of stabbing Hall was also observed weeping before she was whisked inside the hospital.

Hall’s mother was too devastated to speak to the media. Her son, David Swaby, whose face was contorted in grief, could only offer a few words about his brother’s athletic prowess.

“He was a talented youth. He was the goalkeeper for his school which went to the quarter-finals of the daCosta Cup. Him do track and field, him is a good sportsman,” Swaby said.

A Deeside resident, who was among the throng of onlookers who converged at the hospital, said that Hall was a very quiet, well-behaved individual.

“He doesn’t even talk. He is so quiet and he doesn’t give any trouble,” said the resident.

The acting principal concurred, adding that the student accused of the stabbing was not a troublemaker.

“Both students were well-behaved. We never had any problem with them. As you know, he [Hall] was the school’s goalkeeper. Quite a pleasant young man, so there were no major problems with both young men,” she said.

The senior educator, however, lamented that recently the school has been dogged by a new trend which sees the students wearing rings.

“Many of these students are wearing these rings that they seem to value dearly. We have quite a few that we have confiscated over time, quite a few that we have confiscated. So I don’t know what value they have placed on these rings, but we are constantly taking away these rings, and the more you confiscate them the more they come,” Steele said.

When asked if the rings are ‘guard’ rings, Steele responded: “That’s what they are saying. So if you check everybody’s drawer in the school you will find many, many more. I have about five more somewhere. So there is this new trend where they come in with these rings and that’s at the centre of the contention.”

In local folklore so-called guard rings are said to provide the wearer with protection from a range of ills.

Steele added that the students are also finding ingenious means to take weapons, such as knives and scissors, to school undetected.

She said hours before the fatal stabbing two boys were suspended after they were found in possession of knives last Friday. “We have zero tolerance when it comes to weapons, so you can just imagine the shock today when this happened.

“I have been trying to avert things like these, but the students have been creative in the way they conceal their weapons. In the incident today the boy told us that he had it (the knife) in his shoes. They are very, very creative,” the acting principal said.

Classes were suspended for the rest of Monday following the tragedy.

“After speaking to the chairman, we decided that we had to pause and decide how best to deal with the matter as sensitively and delicately as possible. We sent a message to the parents in the group that we have decided to dismiss a little earlier and then grouped with the teachers to strategise, and personnel from the ministry came in to dialogue,” said Steele.

Ironically, the school’s principal, Linvern Wright, who is on leave and is also head of the Jamaica Association of Principals of Secondary Schools, during an interview with the Sunday Observer a week ago, denounced the act of students taking knives to school.

“It is of concern, and principals and deans of discipline along with teachers are really trying to be alert to ensure that these things don’t pass the school gates and then go beyond that to having children injured. It is a problem we have to deal with nationally. The police have it to deal with, and I think parents have it to deal with at home because of the mentality that we have. We just have to see how we can mitigate it as we go along,” Wright had said.

In the Sunday Observer story, one parent had said that she insisted that her son take a scissors to school when he began secondary education.

“This is not something that came with COVID… or just now that face-to-face classes start again. I have been telling my son to hide a scissors in his bag and take to school for years now… since he started high school. Remember, all kinds of people out on the road and, to get to and from school, my son uses public transportation. Anything can happen, especially now,” the woman said.

“I am not sending my child to school to stab anybody’s child or pick a fight. I tell him if you’re on the road and your life in danger, try and defend yourself, and try alert people to help you,” she added.

Another parent told the newspaper: “When my daughter was going to high school, she had to go to Half-Way-Tree and she carried a little knife. Thank God she never had to use it, but there was a time back then when people were holding up and robbing the schoolchildren in the Half-Way-Tree area. And even now that she graduate from school, she take taxi to UWI [The University of the West Indies] and she still carry her protection.”