By Nalinee Seelal
February 25 2016 – newsday.co.tt
TWO teenaged schoolboys were shot dead in a lonely, bushy track off St John’s Road in St Augustine on Tuesday afternoon in an incident police investigators say was linked to a drug deal which had gone sour.
The victims have been identified as Daniel Hall, 16, of Tunapuna and Stephan Singh, 17, of Enterprise, Chaguanas. Hall was a Form Four student of the Aranjuez North Secondary School and school officials confirmed that he had attended classes on Tuesday prior to being murdered. Singh sources said, attended the St Augustine Secondary School.
Police officers who were called to the scene after residents of St John’s Road heard rapid gunfire, came across the bodies of Hall and Singh, with the latter suffering a gunshot wound to the back of the head.
Hall was found with a .38 revolver stuck in his pants waist. Police were yesterday trying to ascertain if the schoolboys had criminal records and/or court cases.
Full Article : newsday.co.tt
Manhunt for three others
Relatives of teen victims admit negative paths
Officers responded and found the bodies of Singh, 17 and Halls, 16. Police said they were told that the teens were seen as part of a group of five entering the bushes and after the shooting only the two deceased were found. Singh, a student of Trinity East College, had an empty revolver on him.
GREED,STUPIDITY,NO DISCIPLINE AND NO PERSONAL AMBITIONS, JUST PURE GREED AND MONEY
SPARE MY FRIEND
HOURS before teenaged students Daniel Hall and his close friend Stephan Singh were murdered on Tuesday, Hall had a frank discussion with one of his associates from a gang, pleading with him not to implicate Singh in the fire-bombing of a vehicle.
The death toll stood at 77 and shows no trend towards decreasing. The youths involved in this wild Wild West incidents were known to possess weapons for some time. This would have been a great opportunity for police and army to conduct raids on these gang leaders homes and take them in for interrogation. Instead they are being treated with “kids gloves”. Surely Dillion and the CoP must have the names of the gang leader and members involved in such high level of criminality coming from the East West Corridor.
No one should be surprised with the escalation of violence in our schools. The problems with our education system is the some that permeates every aspect of life in Trinidad and Tobago – we are hypocrites. We do not view problems as they are, we view ALL of our problems with jaundiced eyes and we respond to them with ill-fated accusations of who is to blame, rather than how do we REALLY fix the problem. Society has changed. It keeps changing with every re-iteration of Government’s policies. The approach to education is the same that the old British colonials left us with in 1962 and we just keep drifting further and further apart from educating our young. One of the worst thing to happen to our educational process is the injection of P-O-L-I-T-I-C-S into educating the young. The racial question comes into play before we even consider what is good as opposed to what is bad for our children. No people is monolithic. No system can cater with monolithic solutions to a plural society and that is why we DESPERATELY NEED to involve the use of trained social scientists to monitor and analyze the changes in our behavior as a society. Not the kind of social scientists that graduate from UWI or as some might say HUWI. We need pragmatic and social intervention to grasp and correct the steps we observe as leading us towards social chaos and disfunctionality. Such intervention should address problems as they REALLY are and not perceived awareness. We are still living in a society that perceives success as belonging to a profession such as medicine, law, finance or religion. We see those who occupy those positions as first tier professionals that have the answers to our problems and therefore MUST BE LISTENED TO when they speak. As it turns out, in most cases, some of these people are the dumbest to even pay attention to. It is the ideas of the ‘learned’ that puts us deeper and deeper into trouble. My brother always tells me, the problems of the world TODAY are not caused by the uneducated and illiterate. It is men and women who are matriculated, certified and specialized, who are responsible for enacting the wrong set of ideas and values to govern us. I was talking to a student recently and asked her where she wanted to go to further her education. I asked the question because in my judgement, that student showed promise, intellect and leadership. My hope was that her answer would have suggested a leaning towards going to QRC, CIC, Fatima or Bishops. Instead she named some backward high of ill-repute that her teacher (of another race) suggested. This shows that we have teachers, whose purpose is NOT to educate but to direct students whom she values and shows no preference for be directed to different paths towards their development. This teacher, is supposed to be a ‘professional’ in our educational systems, deliberately directing their students in directions that are not good for their own professional development and not good for the nation as a whole. Then there are the leaders, the religious leaders who have commanding say in the development of our schools. The education they foster and promote is not to develop national standards, or individual development. They actually promote religion as first priority, race second and segregation as their priorities. Yes, they promote academics but only for those they deem teachable. Our educational system was borne out of the concerns that christians had for educating the population as a whole. It is true that the thrust towards education was pushed by the christian churches to educate ALL of our children. I went to a Catholic school and hindu children were treated with they same degree of professionalism that other students received. This CANNOT be said of the religious leaders who administer of denominational schools today. Economic and social needs have taken parents into different paths to earn a living. The need for economic survival, have taken parents to work in far-away places that keep them away from their children at the most important times of the day. In many cases, it is both the mother and the father, who are not there with the child to instill proper values at crucial times of the day for their development. Some children are not swayed by the opportunity to go astray whilst others are attracted to the distractions. Gangs with evil intentions, recruit the most vulnerable in our schools for their evil purposes. Government alone CANNOT be held responsible for the breakdown in the educational system. Parents are first in line of responsibility. Family, community, religion, social and political leadership are ultimately responsible for the kinds of character we create to build a just and responsible society. While religious leaders hold on to the
respect, perks and esteem which their positions entail, they themselves do not fulfill the purposes for which religion has willfully produced in the past. Religion does not and cannot provide the lead for nation building as our past history so evidently did. Government need to encourage family and community to develop our children. Religion is a personal commitment to culture and social acceptability NOT education, in today’s world. We need to develop avenues to correct our young children when they show signs of going astray. Such intervention must address academic needs, social needs and national needs as well. No amount of prognosticating about who will take part and who would not take part must be tolerated in such discussions. It is a need that must be addressed. This medium does not allow the many needs we have to address to re-direct the failures we now have in our system.