Stabroek News
June 14, 2001

The teacher, who was released on $10,000 station bail on Monday evening after spending Sunday night in police custody for flogging and injuring nine-year-old Nickesha Garraway, a pupil of Lodge/ Enterprise Primary school, was back on the job yesterday.

The female teacher, who was taken into custody eleven days after the incident occurred, flogged Nickesha with a bamboo rod which resulted in a fractured clavicle (collar bone).

The girl was beaten on May 30 and the injury was discovered two days later by the child's mother, Wendy Garraway after she developed a high fever and she slumped on the left shoulder.

Nickesha also returned to school yesterday to begin writing the end-of-term examinations and according to Garraway, the child was not comfortable with the teacher in a nearby class.

According to reliable reports from the school yesterday, the teacher was back on the job teaching her class, Primary Two C.

Nickesha is in Primary Two A. At the time she was injured the teacher was standing in for Nickesha's class teacher who was absent.

Nickesha's relatives yesterday expressed concern about the teacher being back on the job when investigations were being conducted by the police as well as the Ministry of Education. Stabroek News understands that officials from the Georgetown Education Department were in the school yesterday questioning a number of pupils about the incident.

Nickesha's grandmother told this newspaper that the teacher had telephoned her on Monday telling her of her release on bail and that she had flogged the child because the child had thrown water on a boy in the class.

Nickesha had said that she had drunk some water and had been beaten because she had not asked the teacher's permission to drink the water in the class.

The teacher was taken into police custody on Sunday, eleven days after she had been absent from school. Stabroek News could not ascertain from the Headmistress of the school, Shirley Hooper, who is also the General Secretary of the Guyana Teachers' Union, whether the teacher had been granted a leave of absence from work for the period after the beating of the child. The teacher was reported to have been in Essequibo.

The Police Public Relations Department yesterday told Stabroek News that investigations were still continuing with statements still being taken from others connected to the case. (Miranda La Rose)