– Nations principal recounts shooting

By Tajeram Mohabir

SHOCKING, bizarre and stunning were the words used by Nations Principal, Dr Brian O’Toole to describe his shooting two Sundays ago at his Bel Air Promenade, Georgetown home.

Dr O’Toole, who is recovering from the incident and may require overseas treatment for a full recovery, in a sit-down with the Guyana Chronicle on Sunday, related that the ordeal was one he had least expected.

Prior to the shooting, a student was expelled from the New Market Street school after issuing a terrorist threat to students in a WhatsApp message, that had caused great unease among parents and the wider school community.

On the very day of the threat, Dr O’Toole met with scores of concerned parents and assured them that systems will be put in place to ensure students’ and teachers’ safety in a bid to allay their fears.

Following the meeting, the veteran educator drove to the Marriott where he spent a few hours over dinner and conversation with friends, including a scholar from the University of Bedfordshire, who was on a visit to Guyana.

The night was going well until the Nations’ principal left the Marriott. He drove home, entered his yard and locked the gate. It was around 21:30hrs and as he was about to enter his home, the unthinkable happened.

“A young man, thin in size, brandishing a gun appeared from nowhere. He came to about within five feet of me and without warning or utterance, began to fire at me. His hand was trembling. He jumped in the air and his gun was pointed down. I thought it was a prank. It was bizarre. It looks like someone trying to do something he saw in an action movie,” Dr O’ Toole related.

However, he soon realised that the gunman was not up to a prank and his gun was fully loaded.

“The first shot missed me and hit the door. I was shocked. Then another came and struck my left arm and when I looked down I saw blood on the ground and before I realised what was happening, another came, shattering the bone in my right forearm. I was down on the ground and when I looked up, the gunman was nowhere to be seen,” said Dr O’Toole.

The British-trained psychologist said at first, he thought the shooting was an attempted robbery, but following several threatening messages by an unknown instigator on social media after the incident, his initial views changed.

Bel Air Promenade is a quiet, upscale neighbourhood in Georgetown, and according to Dr O’Toole, neighbours told him that they did hear “cranking of zinc” and had noticed a man on a motorcycle, but nothing else.

Dr O’ Toole believes that the shooter was hiding in his yard and exited by scaling the back fence after firing the shots.

FORGIVE HIM
“This is a person who needs a lot of help,” said Dr O’Toole, a devout Bahai, and related that though justice must take its course, in his heart, he would forgive him (the shooter).
Luckily for the Nations principal, at the time of the shooting, a friend of his who is a doctor, was staying at his home.

“I count myself fortunate because my friend who is a doctor was close by and he immediately rendered treatment to stop the heavy bleeding of my hand. It was really serious and after some hesitation in calling an ambulance, my friend who was worried at the time it might arrive, drove me down to the Woodlands Hospital in my car and there the doctors immediately attended to me,” the British-born educator said.

Dr O’ Toole said he is very thankful to the expert advice and treatment received from the doctors at the private hospital and noted that he is feeling much better from the time he was admitted.

Still managing a smile and an upbeat posture, he indicated to this newspaper that two fingers on his right hand are non-functional and would require treatment in the US or UK to get back to normalcy.

Days after the shooting, another section of the media reported that the child who was expelled was not given a fair hearing. The child had indicated that he did make the threatening post in a WhatsApp group, but it was a “joke”.

NOT TRUE
However, Nations Chief Executive Officer Dr Dexter Phillips said the claim of ‘no fair hearing’ is not true, pointing out that the child’s father was consulted in the process and a mutual agreement was reached during the consultation.

“Students in his class were [made] afraid by the threat. They brought it to their teachers; the teachers brought it to us. I had no conversation with him before his dad came to the office and joke or not, we cannot allow that threat to go lightly. And his father agreed. We need to take every threat seriously. Had we not asked him to leave and there was a shoot-up of the school, it would have been a different story. His father has the opportunity to take him to another private school. We made a decision to protect our 3,500-plus member school community,” Dr Phillips told the Guyana Chronicle.

Dr O’ Toole on Sunday said the expulsion of the teenager was done after a thorough investigation into the threat and consultation with his father. Stressing that the decision though a tough one, he said it was made with no intention to hurt the future of the teen, but to protect the 3000-plus students at Nations.

Following the expulsion, several students expressed opposition to the decision and quickly began to air their views in their WhatsApp group chat.

Dr O’ Toole, a seasoned educator, said he viewed this action by the displeased students as “quite normal,” but noted that things took a turn for the worst when a U.S. trouble-maker joined the WhatsApp conversation.

SOCIAL MEDIA
“Here is where the trouble started, because the person from the U.S. began to stir up the complaining students by posting violent threats. This is the evil of social media. Anyone can go there and make all sorts of wild claims and within minutes there are hundreds… thousands of likes and shares on something which is not true. It is sad, because many young people would never get the chance to see reality who are hooked and believe all that they see on social media. It is a medium which has exacerbated some of the problems in society,” Dr O’ Toole said, as he lamented sections of the media and persons on social media attributing certain statements to him while hospitalised, even though he spoke with none of them.

Days after the shooting, the threats have spread to Queen’s College and Bishops’ High, forcing a lockdown of those schools on Friday.

Some of these reports, Dr O’ Toole said, were picked up by friends in the U.S., UK, South Africa and others parts of the world who called to make enquiries and offer their support for his full and speedy recovery.

The incident on the whole, he said, is not a healthy development in the education sector and he will be investing much time in a World Citizenship Programme adopted from the Nancy Cambell Academy in Canada, at Nations.
The Nancy Cambell Academy is a leading school in the Ontario district and the citizenship programme focuses on addressing, through music and drama, issues such as suicidal thoughts, loneliness and depression in children.

Dr O’Toole is hoping that the programme will be adopted by the Ministry of Education and become an integral part of the school system.

For the time being, the Nations principal is hoping for a full recovery sooner rather than later and thanked the Guyana Police Force for their time invested in the investigation to find the perpetrator and get to the bottom of the matter.

SAFE FOR REOPENING
On Sunday, members of the Guyana Police Force conducted a thorough search of Nations campus and certified it free of explosives and dangerous materials ahead of reopening of school today.

Dr O’ Toole welcomed the finding and pointed out that security will be significantly beefed up at school to ensure students and teachers’ safety.

All students will be scanned before entering Nations’ compound, their bags will be checked and police patrols will be heightened around the surroundings of the school. These measures are in addition to private security guards who will be stationed on campus.
Before the shooting, aside from being robbed a few times, Dr O’Toole said he never encountered a major incident as the one two Sundays ago. He thanked all those who offered kind words and support to him, and moreso his family, especially his wife Pan who stood by his side, even as she worked on getting Nations reopened today.

The shooting, Dr O’Toole said, will not make him consider leaving Guyana.

“Ever since I came here about 40 years ago, my life has been dedicated to transforming education in Guyana and that passion has not waned. Currently, more than 60 students at various levels who are not from well-off backgrounds are on scholarship at Nations, some from the Tiger Bay area. We will be bringing four students from underprivileged backgrounds from Gambia and Afghanistan to study at Nations.

I want our students to see the challenges of other students from the wider world and to embrace peace and humanity,” he said, pointing out that teaching is his life and it would have been poorer had he not come to Guyana.