By Vanessa Braithwaite

PUBLIC assistance continues to pour in for the 15-year-old Linden Foundation student who was stabbed on January 23, by a schoolmate.

While the family received monetary donations and food hampers, among other things, which were deemed very helpful for the approximately three weeks she has been hospitalised, a remigrant organisation has taken it a step further to help the family complete their home, so that the teen can have a comfortable place to recover.

The teen’s mother, Dane Lyte, is a single mother of seven who moved to Linden some years ago from Berbice. She is unemployed and four of the seven children are very young. Their father does not have stable employment and thus the family finds it hard to make ends meet. While efforts were made to build a house, for many years, it was left with only the frame and half of the roof completed. They live in the little shack with hopes that one day it will be completed.

Member of the Remigrant Organisation, Kevin Barron, said when they visited the home, they realised that the family needed help immediately.

“This girl will be discharged from the hospital this week and doesn’t have a bed to lay on to heal properly. With someone coming home from the hospital with a stab wound in her back, she needs somewhere comfortable and so we want to directly have an impact in this child’s life,” Barron said.

He, along with the two other members, Paul Nurse and Dexter Copeland, solicited donations from residents and corporate Linden to purchase material to have the structure of the house completed and wired. It is located in Second Phase Amelia’s Ward, Linden.
The victim’s brother, Rashebo Williams, said he feels very good about all of the donations but more so about this particular one since the one- bedroom shack is indeed cramped and is in no way conducive for a recovering person. The works ongoing include the installation of doors, windows, plastering, completion of roof and other basic finishing, to at least make it habitable.

The teen will be discharged later this week from the Linden Hospital Complex and is expected to make a full recovery from the stab wound, despite some of her organs are permanently damaged. The alleged perpetrator, another 15-year-old student, is still on bail as police continue their investigation into the matter.

Since the incident, which went viral, the Region 10 Department of Education has ‘ramped up’ school’s welfare service to prevent violence in schools.