WILLIAMSFIELD, Manchester — When Marion White received a phone call Monday afternoon that her daughter, Akeilia White, had been killed, the Manchester mother was in disbelief that her child was the latest victim of school-based violence.

“When mi hear about stabbing at school I never know it would reach my daughter,” the distraught mother told her cousin, Tonia Anderson, as they stood outside the Accident and Emergency Department at Mandeville Regional Hospital.

The mother recalled her last conversation with her daughter via WhatsApp less than an hour before the 20-year-old was fatally stabbed at Catholic College of Mandeville in Williamsfield.

“I saw her this morning before I left for work and she texted me about 11 o’clock and said ‘Mommy, you alright?’ That was it,” the mother said.

“They just told me that she was in class and the boy just attacked [her], so I don’t know what happened further from there.

“She is a kind person; very nice person, jovial, outspoken She was participating in the sixth-form programme
— hospitality. I don’t know how I feel right now,” the teary-eyed mother said.

A day earlier, as the nation celebrated Mother’s Day, Akeilia and her sister had surprised their mother.

“When I come home from work. She and her sister cooked a special dinner for me of fish, chicken, and beef,” said the mother.

The Jamaica Observer was told that White and a 17-year-old boy were among students in a classroom about midday when another teenager used a sharp object to inflict stab wounds to White and the boy. The injured students were taken to hospital where White was pronounced dead and the boy admitted.

The suspect, who is also 17, was taken into police custody.

Head of the Manchester police Deputy Superintendent Carey Duncan, said the youngster was taken to court and remanded until June 4.

Duncan said detectives are theorising that a missing cellphone and money are possible motives for the incident. He said the police seized the murder weapon, a knife, which the suspect reportedly went for after an initial confrontation with White.

The other student who was injured was said to have tried to intervene in the dispute when he was stabbed.

Political representatives condemned the incident, raising concerns over the growing spate of violence in schools.

Councillor Mario Mitchell (People’s National Party, Bellefield Division) said the incident was shocking.

“There has been a recent spate of school violence across the island. I was at another high school doing work on a playfield when I was notified that there was an incident down here,” he said while pointing to concerns of aggression among students.

Mitchell said that since the COVID-19 pandemic “teachers have been saying that the students are more aggressive. They are more violent, and I am calling on all the powers that be to do whatever it is in their powers to assess whatever is happening. There is something drastically wrong with our students”.

He called for attention and support to be given to programmes designed to treat with violence in schools.

“I am asking for whatever [assistance], whether psychological help… There is a strain on our teachers, it is a strain on the students, who are going through stress. Parents must play a role,” he said.

“We as politicians must play a role and the administrators of the school system, the minister of education. This is a murder that happened when somebody sent their child to school to get an education and has to be told that your child is dead, in a morgue on ice. This is something that I wish on no parent and this is something that we as a country must come together to ensure that we combat this problem. There is something happening with our students that we must get to the bottom of and we must find out what exactly is happening. All [groups] must get involved
— the JTA (Jamaica Teachers’ Association), the students, the administration, the Ministry [of Education], the Opposition, everybody,” added Mitchell.

Manchester Central Member of Parliament Rhoda Crawford also reacted to the incident.

“The heartbreaking incident has sent shock waves through the school and wider community, plunging us into a state of mourning. Our immediate thoughts are with the families of the students affected, the students who witnessed the events, and the broader school family. I have personally reached out to the Minister of Education and Youth, alerting her to this devastating incident,” Crawford said in a statement.

She also pointed to the 17-year-old student who was injured in the stabbing incident, wishing for his speedy recovery.

“These events underscore the urgent need for unity in our collective effort against crime and violence, and highlight the importance of prioritising conflict resolution strategies within our schools and communities.

“I remain committed to working closely with parents, school authorities, law enforcement, the church and other critical stakeholders as we strengthen our quest to make our schools and communities safer,” she said.

Last week Education and Youth Minister Fayval Williams, during her presentation to the sectoral debate in Parliament, described the increasing incidents of violence among students as “madness” and urged Jamaicans to play their part in ending the problem.

The long-standing issue of school violence came to the fore in recent weeks with numerous confrontations between students being circulated on social media.

Last month a video that went viral showed a Meadowbrook High School female student viciously beating a schoolmate, including stomping on her and kicking her in the face after she fell to the ground.

Police opened an investigation into the incident — which occurred on Friday, April 19 on Havendale Drive, metres from the school — and said the student who was seen inflicting the beating could be slapped with criminal charges.

On April 18, 15-year-old Raneil Plummer, a student at Irwin High School in St James, died after being stabbed in the chest by a schoolmate outside the school gate, just after classes were dismissed for the day.

Another incident, which escalated around that time, saw students from several prominent Corporate Area high schools involved in a street brawl which left some of them injured. It resulted in the closure of one school for two days.

On Sunday the Observer reported the president of Jamaica Association of Guidance Counsellors in Education Rochina Anderson as saying that the volume of violent encounters in schools is increasing the workload on her members.

“Currently, as stressed as we are, you have a lot of backlog. The cases are occurring so frequently that you hardly can keep up with a child. You do a first session and so many other sessions come in-between and you are to do a second session, meet with the parents, do a home visit, compile that, work through that case to see if you now need to refer that child externally, and much more,” Anderson said.

“You find that a form teacher might be saying, ‘I referred this child and nothing has yet been done,’ but the counsellor has not yet been able to attend to that because of other cases and parents calling,” she explained.

“While we are having sessions with the children we are doing parenting consultations as well, and if the client’s situation seems a little off and we need more information then we have to find the home to see what the background is like and what other factors may be affecting the child,” she added.