The police in Berbice have held a man who ran into the Bohemia Primary School yesterday with a cutlass and menaced persons in the compound.
No one was injured but the man later chopped a scooter belonging to a parent.
The school is located along the main Corentyne Highway.
According to parents, yesterday morning, the man began flailing his cutlass wildly in search of the woman.
Rishi Bickram, who serves as the gatekeeper at the location said the woman in question told him to “shut the gate” which he did. However, he said, at that point he saw the suspect running on to the school bridge with a cutlass. “And he fan the cutlass on me and me tell he `wah happen’ and he start cuss up me to move myself so and I hide behind the gate and he fan a chop on the gate and he walk in straight at the back”, the gatekeeper said.
Bickram pleaded with the suspect to leave but he said the man paid him no heed. “I feel unsafe because you need a guard here because you na know who can come in.”
Eyewitnesses say that the man was searching for the woman who he claimed owed him money. He reportedly ran around the school which had students and teachers as school was about to start. After he reached the canteen, the seller there who is known to him ordered him to leave the compound which he did.
As he exited he noticed the woman’s electrical scooter on the road and began firing chops at it. He fled and was held by the police later in the day.
Meanwhile, parents at the location were fuming as the police took over forty minutes to respond although a police outpost is located a stone’s throw away.
After not getting an immediate response from the ranks, parents blocked the Corentyne Highway with wood for a few minutes.
Vanessa Baker, of Number 19 Village, Corentyne, said that the entire incident has left her son who attends the school traumatized. She said that she was speaking to a teacher when the man entered.
Meanwhile, according to parents the school does not have a day security guard. Baker said, “We keep asking for a day security guard and nothing. It’s been about two years now. If there was a guard here he would not have got in because the gate would a been closed.”
Based on information gathered, an evening guard is attached to the school and a request was made for a day guard which is pending at the Regional Democratic Council.
