16-yr-old student stabbed to death at Covent Garden school fair

Sixteen-year-old Brian Charles Yearwood of Lot 69 Grove Public Road, EBD was fatally stabbed in the region of his chest, allegedly by a 17-year-old resident of Kaneville, EBD at some time around 20:00h on Saturday.

The incident occurred in the compound of the Covent Garden Nursery School on the East Bank of Demerara (EBD), where the late Covent Garden Secondary

School student had gone to attend a concert held by his school.

According to police reports, a policeman who had attended the concert with a relative responded immediately, and with the assistance of other persons, rushed Yearwood to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre, where he was pronounced dead on arrival (DoA).

Guyana Times visited Yearwood’s home, and his grieving mother, Beverley, related that she had dropped her son off at the school at sometime around 17:00h on Saturday, and then at around midnight was informed by one of his friends about his tragic death.

“The lil boy (Brian’s friend) just run in the house and throw heself on the chair and just start crying. Then he say, ‘Aunty, they kill Brian’. I didn’t believe him, so I pick he up and bring he outside, and we sit down and he tell me again, ‘Aunty, they kill Brian, he done dead’,” the woman related.

“So I ask him, ‘Where is Brian right now?’ and he said, ‘The police got him at the hospital, and he dead’. Is like then it sink in, and I just start screaming…I scream for (the tenants) upstairs, and continue screaming all the time,” the distraught woman recounted.

She said family members immediately went to the hospital, where she saw her son’s motionless body lying on a stretcher.

This distraught mother explained that, up to Saturday evening, family members were not sure what had transpired at the school to cause her son’s death; but on Sunday morning, a few of Brian’s friends came over and related to her what had happened.

The woman said she was told that her son was sitting on a bench with a few other boys and another group of boys sitting opposite was teasing them. She said the boys sitting on the bench with Brian subsequently got up and moved away, but Brian remained there sitting. Seeing Brian alone, the other group of boys went over to his bench and began teasing him.

The woman noted that she was not told exactly what happened after that – whether or not her son had retaliated and angered the group — but they began pelting him with bottles, and so he escaped.

“He got away from them and ran up to the guard hut. There were some teachers standing there, so he ran and he stopped in front of the teachers. Maybe he was thinking that he was safe; but, in the presence of the teachers, those boys just run up, and one of them stabbed him. He plunged the knife into my son’s heart and pulled it out. Brian then run from there and he fall down at the fence,” the grieving mother related to this newspaper.

The 17-year-old suspect, a dropout student of the same school, has since been arrested. According to the mother, she was made to understand that Brian and the suspects had been friends, but she is not sure what would have led to Saturday’s tragedy.

Brian had been a former student of Central High School, and had only transferred to the Covent Garden Secondary School in September last year. The 16-year-old was described by his family as an easy-going and jovial individual. He leaves to mourn his parents and five siblings, along with other relatives and friends.

His body is at the mortuary awaiting a post mortem examination. Police investigators have since started collecting statements from persons who attended the concert and would have witnessed the fatal stabbing.

Nevertheless, the suspect remains in custody also assisting with investigations.