Different day, different school, same heartbreak, same pain, same fear.

For the third time in less than a week, teachers, administrators and grief counsellors were tasked with comforting children dealing with the trauma of their schoolmates who were victims of Jamaica’s heartless criminals.

This time it was students at St George’s Girls’ Primary and Infant School who had to be comforted after two of their schoolmates were among six people left nursing gunshot wounds when gunmen fired on a group of mainly women and children on text Lane in the central Kingston community on Tuesday night.

Up to late Thursday the two young girls remained in hospital, while tearful classmates and friends questioned why they had been shot.

For Valrie Brown, principal of the school, dealing with news that two of her students had become the latest victims of the senseless attacks on the nation’s children was particularly painful.

“I am stunned. I am concerned as to what is happening with our children and I pray to God that some good sense will prevail and we will sit back and reflect and understand that the children are the future generation and if we don’t protect them and take care of them I don’t know what the world will look like,” Brown told the Jamaica Observer.

With her teachers taking the children through their normal paces on Thursday, Brown pointed out that there is a tight bond between everyone at the school.

“We have a caring set of teachers, support staff members, and administrators, because they are the children who are entrusted to our care and we must do the best that we can,” said Brown, who noted that she had been in contact with the parents of the children who had been shot and would be visiting the two girls who survived the attack.

They were more fortunate than 13-year-old Shantina Sergeant whose charred and decomposed body was found under a sheet of zinc beside a burnt-out refrigerator in Baillieston, Clarendon; and four-year-old Shannon Gordon who was one of five people fatally shot as gunmen opened fire in the community of Commodore in Linstead, St Catherine, on Sunday.

For Brown, who has spent more than 20 years in the education sector, the recent attacks on Jamaica’s children have been particularly heart-rending.

“It is, and as I said before, we continue to pray to God. All of us as a nation need to sit back and reflect and to see how we move forward to protect our children in the best possible way,” said Brown.

The Text Lane shooting — which counted the two St George’s Girls’ Primary and Infant School students and a teenager with special needs among the injured — came hours after Minister of Education Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon described the attacks on Jamaica’s children as “senseless and heart-rending”.

According to Morris Dixon, she has been tasked to go to schools to provide comfort and support after attacks on students much too often.

She pointed to the robbery of potential and promise with the killing of children who were not given a chance at life.

“Those children should be dancing. They should be doing their skits. They should be at school learning about the world and dreaming big about their future. But they’re not here with us because of senseless violence,” declared Morris Dixon.

A classroom devotion in session at St George’s Girls’ Primary and Infant School on Thursday after two of its students were left nursing gunshot wounds on Tuesday. (Photo: Joseph Wellington)

Minister of Education Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon looks at toys and cards placed on the desk of late Rosemount Primary and Infant School student Shannon Gordon during a visit to the school in St Catherine on Tuesday. Shannon was one of five people killed in a shooting incident in Commodore, Linstead, on Sunday night. In the background are principal of the school Malaika Sinclair Bailey, and Shannon’s classmates. (Photo: JIS)