Residents of Area W location in Francistown were recently shell shocked to learn about a bizarre and scary incident in which a standard 2 boy at one of the local primary schools, Our Lady of the Desert stabbed at least 37 pupils at the public institution with a syringe.
Regional Education Director for North East, Labani Mokgosi said the six year old boy picked the syringe behind the classroom during break time and started to innocently prick his colleagues as they were playing. “After learning about such the disturbing incident, we moved swiftly and took all the affected students to the Area W clinic to conduct a thorough health screening. The victims who were all standard 2 pupils were quickly attended by medical officers who gave them the appropriate medication to prevent the spread of deadly infections such as HIV/AIDS. I can confidently confirm that all the students received a clean bill of health and are back attending classes as usual,” Mokgosi told The Patriot on Sunday. It is said the syringe was not used before the little boy picked it up.
The Director stated that after the unfortunate incident occurred, they instigated a thorough investigation to establish where the little boy could have taken the syringe from. He continued: “Our investigations have revealed that the boy did not take the syringe from his home instead he innocently picked it behind one of the classrooms and started to prick his colleagues for fun as they were playing.”
Mokgosi revealed that had they discovered that the boy took the syringe from home his parents or guardian was going to be charged with negligence. He emphasized that such hazardous apparatus should be disposed of safely at all times to avoid such incidents because children like to experiment about anything that they find out.
Mokgosi said they called an emergency meeting where the parents of the affected children were informed about the incident. “The parents together with the affected students were offered professional counselling in order to contain the situation,” he further pointed out. The Director dismissed allegations that the standard 2 student has been slapped with suspension from school. He insisted that they were dealing with a minor who cannot be severely reprimanded.
Mokgosi observed that as education authorities, they will always be on high alert to avoid such unfortunate incidents to reoccur in the future.