Police in St. Elizabeth have taken the eleven-grader male B.B. Coke High School student who allegedly beaten a 14-year-old fellow student into unconsciousness for stepping on his shoes into custody.
The police said the boy was taken to the Junction police station by his mother.
According to reporting, at about 2 p.m. on Friday, September 29, 2023, the boys were among a group of students standing in line to collect their cell phones at a security post on the school’s compound.
The grade eight student accidentally stepped on the eleven-grader shoes, and he got upset and started to punch the 14-year-old boy in the face-causing him to fall to the ground and lose consciousness.
Other students reportedly intervened. The authorities rushed the boy to the Mandeville Regional Hospital in Manchester, where the authorities admitted him for treatment.
The boy’s mother, Shantel Golbourne, said:
“I screamed when I saw my son. I was in a state of shock to see what he had done to my son, who only stepped back because he did not want to fall,” said Golbourne.
Shantel Golbourne
Tamika Holness, the victim’s aunt, reportedly said that when she found out what had happened to her nephew and tried to alert the school principal, efforts to get information from a teacher proved futile.
“When I called the teacher, she responded, ‘Why are you calling me? I am not the principal, I am not the dean of discipline, and I don’t know anyone by the name of [victim’s name redacted]’, and [we] are not supposed to call her number,” said Holness. “That teacher should not be in the classroom; she is uncaring and unprofessional.”
Tamika Holness
The family is saddened.