MONTEGO BAY, St James — Four Western Jamaica high school students have scoffed at the strongly held notion by some of their peers that the wearing of so-called guard rings provides them with protection.

The students — Thadine Tinglin of Anchovy High in St James; Shania Norman who attends Muschett High in Trelawny; Gabrienna Roach from Little London High in Westmoreland; and Raphael Coach of Hopewell High in Hanover — were guests at a recent Jamaica Observer forum held at the newspaper’s Montego Bay office in recognition of Child Month 2022.

The issue was discussed against the background of the stabbing death of 16-year-old Khamal Hall, a Grade 10 student at William Knibb Memorial High School in Trelawny, by one of his peers during the lunch break in an alleged dispute over a guard ring.

The killing shocked the country after allegations emerged on March 21 that the two boys had an altercation over the ring, which belonged to another student, when things turned deadly.

Hall’s alleged attacker, a 16-year-old student, has been charged in connection with the fatal stabbing.

A thanksgiving service for the life of Hall was scheduled for yesterday at Deeside New Testament Church of God in Trelawny.

Hall, who is from Hastings district in Deeside, Trelawny, was the goalkeeper of his school’s daCosta Cup football team.

During the Observer forum, Tinglin rubbished claims made by a man on social media that wearing a guard ring made him invisible to people in his surroundings.

“I was watching a news report about this man who said he was wearing it for protection. He pointed to a scenario where he was seated and persons would walk by and not see him. This man, who is probably in his 40s or 50s, really believes that this ring made him invisible? People don’t even have no time for this man. Him sit down and people walk past him and he is really like ‘Yes, that’s how it protects me, they can’t see me’. I don’t think being able to not be seen is something good,” said the Grade 11 student.

“I think it is total foolishness. Wearing a guard ring, what is it going to do? How do you know it is protection, where do you go to get the protection?” she questioned.

Grade 10 student Norman, said that the students embracing guard rings should be reminded that there have been instances in which players in the lotto scam have been shot and killed while still wearing their guard rings.

“What we need to point out to the young ones, not the big ones — they should have sense — how they say it is protection and the scammers still get shot and die. So it’s not protection, it is just fashion,” she stated.

Grade 10 student Roach is of the belief that students who wear these rings are emulating their contemporaries or lotto scammers in their communities.

“They are just following friends. They see their little friends wearing guard rings and they say, ‘Oh, it’s for protection’. I think it is the friends who they are surrounded with or people in the community they are emulating,” she argued.

“You have scammers living in communities, you have children who watch the scammers and follow exactly what they’re doing. So I believe it’s peer pressure or just following.”

Coach, a Grade 8 student who aspires to be a professional cricketer, branded the parents of some of these students involved in the wearing of guard rings as “irresponsible adults”.

“I feel that people don’t know God any more, so the background isn’t really there. It really starts at the home. You can’t grow up in an environment where the conditions are violent. So if the parents are not doing the right thing, I don’t think that the children will at the end of the day,” he argued.