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A Grade 12 student from a well-known Ladysmith school was recently stabbed on the school grounds.
This comes after a small group of perpetrators allegedly barged through the school gates on Thursday morning, 11 November 2021, pushing past security guards and stabbing a student in the shoulder. The suspects then fled the scene on foot, leaving schoolchildren stunned.
Colonel Thembeka Mbele, police spokesperson, says the learner was attacked at 7.30 a.m.
“He was on the school premises when his schoolmate approached him, and stabbed him twice in his right arm.”
Colonel Thembeka Mbele
Colonel Mbele also claims that the 20-year-old suspect was apprehended on the scene. He will now appear in the Ladysmith Magistrate’s Court on charges of assault GBH.
As the court proceedings begin, the Democratic Alliance (DA) will urge Kwazi Mshengu, MEC for Education in KZN, to conduct a thorough investigation into the matter to identify any security lapses.
“The DA is shocked by this horrific incident. Regrettably, it is not the first school stabbing that has made headlines nationally during the last few weeks. That this learner escaped with his life and that no one else was injured, is a miracle,” said Imran Keeka, DA provincial education spokesperson.
He goes on to say that the fact that this daring crime was carried out in such a brazen manner has highlighted how inadequate school security is.
As early as 2019, when KZN’s school security programme was being debated, the DA made several recommendations.
Among these were, but not limited to:
- Self-defense training for school security personnel.
- Deterrents such as pepper spray.
- A direct link to armed backup support in schools that use a security company.
- CCTV cameras installed in so-called hotspot schools.
“At the time, we also called for schools that could afford to install their own CCTV systems to do so, given their important role they play in providing evidence when unfortunate incidents occur,” Keeka added.
The school in question was contacted for more information. However, none were available at the time of publication.
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