A high school student was taken into custody by police after his attempt to discard a knife outside of a bus window resulted in another student being injured on Thursday. Both students attend the Patrick J. Bethel High School on the island of Abaco. A fight broke out among students subsequent to the initial incident.
Acting District Superintendent for Education on Abaco, Chester Cooper spoke to ZNS News about the matter. He said, “we put the kids in the classrooms and just did a random search just to make sure that it was an isolated incident. And after that occurred we actually resumed classes, so we had classes all day. Of course, they’re were some parents who were concerned about the safety of their children and they came to the front gate more or less demanding that they be given access to their kids so they could take them home.
Cooper denied that there was an increase in school violence in Abaco saying, “over the last few weeks its been very quiet here at Patrick Bethel. I’m consistently checking and like I said this is the first major incident that would have occurred in quite a while. I understand that there are issues that exist here at the school but of course its the ministry’s policy to ensure safety on campus.”
