Update | No report of threat to shoot up Grange Hill Primary in Westmoreland – Police

Head of the Area One Police, Assistant Commissioner Clifford Chambers, has dismissed claims that a threat was issued to carry out a shooting at Grange Hill Primary School in Westmoreland.

Speaking with The Gleaner, Chambers said no such report was received by the police and that checks did not substantiate the claims.

“We have been hearing about it and my intelligence, my informant, my investigators, no one can confirm that any such threat was issued, so I have to come out and say we have not received or are we acting on any such threat,” Chambers declared.

However, he confirmed that a student of Grange Hill Primary was injured today in a shooting on a vehicle by gunmen.

“We know that a vehicle was shot up with a student in it, among other persons. And the student attends that school and that did not even happen in close proximity to school,” he explained.

Stemming from that shooting, Chambers said school resource officers were deployed to both Grange Hill Primary School and Grange Hill High School.

Approximately 1,700 students were affected today when classes at both institutions were suspended following an alleged threat to shoot up the primary school.

The school's principal Clayton Smith said parents rushed to collect their children out of fear.

“The words that I got were that they were going to shoot up the Grange Hill Primary School. I am not certain why that may be the case,” Smith told The Gleaner this morning.

“We saw a rush of parents as evidence of the threat was sent, not to us at school but to parents, and by the time we got settled, parents were coming to take their children,” the principal said.

Meanwhile, Trevine Donaldson-Lawrence, principal of the Grange Hill High School, informed that the school also had to dismiss classes out of caution in light of the alleged shooting threat to their feeder school.

According to her, while her school was not immediately threatened, the decision was taken to suspend classes for the day on the basis that its students, teachers, and other staff members are from areas within the wider Grange Hill community and officials acted out of an abundance of caution. 

- Albert Ferguson

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