Dec. 9, 2005 – An unidentified teenager was admitted to the emergency room at the Schneider Regional Medical Center Friday afternoon after being stabbed in an incident that occurred near the Addelita Cancryn Junior High School. Police said they do not know what led to the attack, the latest in a rash of violent incidents that took place this week at public schools on St. Thomas and St.
Croix.
An assistant to Noreen Michael, Education commissioner, citing sources in the office of the district superintendent, said the stabbing took place off campus but the wounded student staggered back onto campus after the attack. Police and Emergency Medical Service personnel – and at least two ambulances – responded to the scene.
Sgt. Thomas Hannah, V.I. Police Department spokesman, confirmed that a student had been stabbed several times.
An official at Schneider Hospital said, shortly after 6 p.m., that the injured student was undergoing treatment in the hospital emergency room.
The incident at Cancryn occurred on the same day that teachers and school monitors stayed off the job in large numbers at St. Croix's Central High School, where Hannah said a number fights have broken out this week.
The Cancryn stabbing also took place one day after press reports said school monitors at the Ivanna Eudora Kean High School used batons and pepper spray to break up a series of on-campus fights that were threatening to escalate.
"The problem with violence in our schools is not centrally located at Central High School. It is a territorial problem," said local American Federation of Teacher's union leader Tyrone Molyneaux.
On Friday, Hannah named the schools where reports of violence had come to the attention of law enforcement in the past week: Central High, the St. Croix Educational Complex, Elena Christian Junior High School, Joseph Gomez Elementary School, Ivanna Eudora Kean High School, Arthur Richards Junior High School, and Cancryn Junior High.
Another police official said the manager of the Virgin Islands
Housing Authority had also contacted authorities recently to express concerns about security in some of the housing communities. The names of those communities were not offered and the police official declined further
comment on the matter.
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