An eight-year-old student of Belladrum Primary School had her lower lip clipped with a pair of scissors after an “exchange of words” with a classmate on Wednesday.
Crystal Cush, a Grade Three student, bled profusely from the half inch wound inflicted during the lunchtime attack, her mother Marva Reynolds, of Belladrum, told Stabroek News.
She said the incident stemmed from the other child telling Crystal not to look at her and her daughter in turn playfully displaying her teeth to her. The child got angry and picked up scissors that belonged to a teacher and clipped her lip as a result.
Reynolds, a nurse attached to the Fort Wellington Hospital, was angry that in spite of all the bleeding, the headmistress did not see it fit to inform her or her sister, who looks after the child when she is not around, of the incident.
According to Reynolds, the headmistress only sent for the other child’s mother, who took Crystal to the Belladrum Health Centre.
The woman then took Crystal home and told her aunt that there was an “exchange of words” between the two girls. She also gave the aunt a bottle of glycerin and told her that the nurses gave her that to apply to the child’s lip because it was “something small.”
Reynolds, however, said the cut measured about half an inch and that her daughter was in pain. She had to suture and dress the wound and give her daughter painkillers and antibiotics.
“We live very close to the school and they should have sent to call my sister before taking her anywhere. They had to pass where I live to go to the health centre but they did not even stop in,” she lamented.
Her nephew from Grade Six happened to pass the class and when he saw
Crystal crying and with blood all over, he took her to the headmistress’ office. The child’s shirt as well as her “lunch towel” had a lot of blood.
Reynolds visited the school at 8 am yesterday to speak to the head teacher but she was not there as yet. She met the teacher to whom the scissors belonged and she told her that she was “dealing with the matter.” The teacher, who had the scissors on her desk, said she had just left to go to the headmistress’ office when the child picked it up.
Meanwhile, Reynolds said that last week her daughter came home with her finger swollen and reported that a teacher lashed it with the whip. The child also told her mother that the teacher embarrassed her by putting her to stand in front of the class and calling her a “copycat.” In that case, the woman said she had to work and could not go to school to inquire.
