13-yr-old set ablaze by peer
– suffers third degree burns
A TEENAGER is currently hospitalized at the New Amsterdam  Hospital where he  is nursing third degree burns,  after being set ablaze by one of his peers on February 27, last. Osarin  Stuart, age 13 years, of Lot 41 Stanleytown, Berbice was in company with  his  friends at a roadside stall  along the Stanleytown Public Road, when  a named peer threw  a flammable substance  upon him before pitching  a lighted  match in his direction.
The minor, relating the story from his bedside at the male surgical ward, said, “I thought he was joking. I did not do him anything. We are friends. I hurriedly took off my jersey, before running over to my mother.”
His mother, Otalley Stuart, recalled being at home, when her son shouted, “Tally, Tally, I get burn, Gavin throw gasoline on me and scratch a match.”
Believing that it was a prank Ms. Stuart told her son to go aside, prior to him returning to her and displaying the blebs about his chest.
The mother and her injured son, thereafter, proceeded to the Central Police Station where the incident was reported. A subsequent visit to the New Amsterdam Hospital, resulted in admission of the teen.
Ms Stuart told the media that on her initial visit to the station, she was scared and, when questioned as to whether she wanted to ‘make up the story’, she replied  saying that she was a single parent and that the care of the injured child would have been challenging.
However, when asked by the alleged perpetrator whether she needed money, she replied, “No, as my child is in danger.  He (the suspect) would bring food, but the child does not eat it, he is vomiting.”
On a subsequent visit to the police station, the teen’s mother said she was questioned by the cops as to whether she made an agreement with the suspect’s relatives for them to take things for her son. But noted ,that while things can’t bring back her son to normalcy, she is a single parent.
Ms. Stuart lamented that the incident involving her son is not the first to have occurred, but the third, as her son was previously locked in an inoperable freezer, and thereafter thrown from a high building, resulting in injuries to his head.
During the latter incident, he was transferred to the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation where, after several weeks, he was discharged  but was subsequently admitted  at a private institution for a speech rehabilitation therapy.
Stuart claimed that the mother of the alleged perpetrator had pleaded with her not to ‘make a story’, and had offered the driver of the ambulance $5000 to purchase fuel for the vehicle.
Unfortunately, no reporton the previous incidents were made to the police.
The alleged perpetrator, also 13 years old, is a third form student of a private learning institution in the New Amsterdam Township.