Bloodshed over guard ring

A school administrator has sounded the alarm about children’s growing obsession with occult practices in the wake of a deadly fight between students over a guard ring.

Audrey Steele, acting principal of William Knibb High in Trelawny, said the western Jamaica school was reeling from the stabbing death of 16-year-old Khamal Hall on Monday.

Steele said also that educators faced another troubling trend: the smuggling of weapons past security checkpoints – a lapse that the accused student reportedly confessed to having exploited to slip through with the knife that was used to stab Khamal, a 10th-grader, in the back around 11:05 a.m.

The weapon was reportedly hidden in his shoe.

The school community is shocked, said Steele, because both boys were reportedly well behaved.

“Many of these students are wearing these rings and we have quite a number of them that we have confiscated over time, so I don’t know what value they have placed on these rings, but we are constantly taking away these rings,” said Steele.

“... The more you confiscate them is the more they come,” she added, while displaying a cache of confiscated knives and guard rings, some adorned with skulls and crosses.

Guard rings are believed to hold supernatural power for the wearer, providing protection from harm and even death.

Following Monday’s violence, classes at William Knibb were suspended for the remainder of the day.

The acting principal said that the board was scheduled to meet late Monday afternoon to decide on the school’s operations for Tuesday.

Reports are that the students were on a short break when the now-detained student approached Khamal, a goalkeeper on the daCosta Cup team, and accused him of stealing a guard ring from a friend.

It is further reported that Khamal used a length of bamboo to strike the boy, who allegedly retaliated by stabbing Khamal.

The 16-year-old was rushed to the Falmouth Hospital where he was pronounced dead. The accused, whose name has not been revealed because he is a minor, is in the custody of the Falmouth police.

The bloodshed came hours after Senior Superintendent Christopher Phillips, commander of the St Catherine South Police Division, forewarned of a school crisis, with many at-risk youths tainted by gang and antisocial associations returning to full-scale face-to-face classes.

“We have seen where it has already started in some parishes, and I am predicting that we are going to have hell, for at least another year, with these children returning to face-to-face classes,” Phillips said in a Gleaner interview on Monday.

“... In addition to going after the seasoned gang members, we have to look out for the at-risk youngsters, who would have interacted with them. Some probably got involved, whether as lookouts, or [were] used as pawns in extortion rackets.”

A senior cop from the Trelawny Police Division has expressed concern about the tentacles of organised crime in schools, sharing with The Gleaner that several students have been flagged as perpetrators of the lottery scam.

That scheme, which mushroomed in Jamaica almost 20 years ago, targets mainly elderly American citizens, fleecing them of hundreds of thousands of US dollars on the basis of bogus sweepstakes winnings.

“Our investigations have revealed that a number of these students are active in the lottery scamming, and these guard rings are purchased through scamming,” the senior cop, who requested anonymity because the details of investigations are privileged, said on Monday.

“These students have been out of school for close to two years and a number of them are caught up in this illegal practice of making quick money, which they use to purchase these rings, which are very expensive.”

Some guard rings cost between $100,000 and $150,000, The Gleaner understands.

Those developments are cause for concern for William Knibb High School board chairman, the Rev Jonathan Hemmings, who described the incident as “very tragic”.

“We would want to spare a thought to both families. It is a devastation for the school, so much that for emotional health, we have to close the school for the rest of the afternoon,” Hemmings said in a Gleaner interview.

But he was quick to defend William Knibb’s record, saying the incident was not evidence of systemic breakdown at the institution.

“One must also understand that this tragic event is nothing that the school encourages or tolerates, because up to this morning, two students were suspended for carrying weapons. This is nothing that the school encourages,” he said.

hopeton.bucknor@gleanerjm.com