ST ELIZABETH, Jamaica — Commanding Officer for the St Elizabeth Division, Superintendent Coleridge Minto is warning the public against issuing threats to the administration of the St Elizabeth school where a sub-machine gun was seized from a seven-year-old student last week.

He issued the warning while providing an update into the ongoing investigations.

Superintendent Minto said the police are now investigating the source of threats which came to their attention over the last two days.

“I want to appeal to persons in the area to refrain from interfering with any form of witness or any person connected to this investigation. The investigation is advanced, the weapon was seized and has been sent to our forensic lab for testing. Further updates will be provided later,” Minto said.

Investigations have been ongoing since Thursday of last week. Minto said the father of the seven-year-old was taken into custody the same day, hours after the seizure of the weapon.

READ: 7-y-o student found with submachine gun at St Elizabeth school

In the meantime, he is joining with the Child Protection and Family Services Agency (CPFSA) and the Children’s Advocate in appealing to the public not to expose children to any form of moral danger.

“Any exposure of this nature to our children certainly cannot be good,” Superintendent Minto said, while calling for parents to search and to police their own children.

“Search their bags to ensure that guns, knives or any form of weapons or contraband are not being brought into the school compounds. The school is a place of teaching and learning and we certainly want for all our students, our teachers, principals and staff to be safe in that environment and therefore this highlights the challenge and the problems that we face where our children are exposed to things like guns in our communities,” Superintendent Minto said.

He noted that Community Safety and Security officers have been deployed and have been supporting the schools across the division since the start of the school year.

“In fact this was the first major incident that has occurred in any of our schools in the parish. Since this incident we have been in that particular school, we have had at least one major meeting with the school administrators as well as persons from the Ministry of Education and there are certain decisions that are being treated with from the school level,” Superintendent Minto said.

“We continue to provide support in terms of security, in terms of having our school resource officers deployed and we will continue that support in our schools across the parish,” he added.