Delay doesn’t mean no charges in school violence cases – Bailey

Charges are still possible in two cases in which student-involved stabbing incidents at or near schools have left students with serious injuries.

Assistant Commissioner of Police with responsibility for crime fighting, Trevor “Buju” Bailey told iWitness News that the approach to possible prosecution of the alleged perpetrators is different. 

In November 2024, a Central Leeward Secondary School student was stabbed in the neck outside her school, allegedly by a student of Bethel High School.

The incident was captured on video, which went viral on social media.

However, police have not laid any charges in that incident, even as the injured students continued to struggle with the aftereffects of that injury.

Then, on Oct. 3, 2025, another video went viral of students of North Union Secondary School holding up the limp body of a schoolmate after he was stabbed in the head, allegedly by another student.

Bailey told iWitness News that the police have not laid charges in any of those incidents.

He explained that the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Sejilla Mc Dowall, has adopted the position that police must send to her office all case files of incidents in which students are alleged perpetrators.

“And then the file goes to her office, is perused, and then she will make the determination as to whether or not charges are laid against the student,” Bailey told iWitness News.

“And that has been the official position that has been adopted. And in the North Union case, it is a 16-year-old who stabbed the other student,” he said.

The position of the Officer of the DPP might have been informed by the Child Justice Act, passed in 2019, which sets the age of criminal responsibility at 12, up from age 8.

It is not clear whether the law has been operationalised, although the DPP’s office might have been acting in keeping with its tenets.

The law provides for establishing criminal responsibility and applies to persons under 18 years old who are alleged to have committed a crime.

It, however, also applies to any person who turns 18 before the proceedings that had been instituted are concluded.

The law also applies to persons over 18 but under 21, on the direction of DPP in special circumstances.

Under the law, neither corporal punishment nor a sentence of life imprisonment can be imposed on a child.

Bailey said that the approach of the office of the DPP does not open the door for students to act as they wish in school.

“… rather,  … the system is looking for a way to find alternative ways in dealing with juveniles, to try and avoid giving them a criminal record early in their childhood days,” he said.

“So you look at alternative ways to deal with these issues. Young people are vulnerable and immature in their actions and … the system is looking for ways to deal with these young juveniles,” he told iWitness News.

“But I wouldn’t say that the door is open for them to do as they like, because several of them have been prosecuted. It just means that the prosecution was not initiated as quickly as hitherto before the law was passed in respect to juveniles. Because before, the police would have done the investigation and charge right away,” he said.

“…even in the case in Barrouallie, it’s not that we’re saying that the young lady who inflicted the wound that she may not be prosecuted. It just means that it hasn’t happened as yet.”