RSS Feed
Follow us on Twitter
Star YouTube Channel
When Wayne Bailey and Fitzroy Simpson, both third-form students of Edwin Allen High School in Clarendon, left their physical education class just before break to change their clothes, their classmates had no idea that it would be the last time they would have been seen.
Police reports are that the 14-year-old boys drowned yesterday in the Rio Minho in Clarendon.
The Frankfield police say that about 10:30 a.m., Bailey and Simpson left school after a physical education session and went to the nearby Rio Minho where they got into difficulties and drowned. Their bodies were fished from the river by local divers and removed to the morgue for post-mortem.
THE STAR has learnt that Bailey, who hails from Spaldings, and Simpson who is from Copper Wood, both in Clarendon, along with eight other boys breached the school's security by leaving from a rear gate without permission. It is understood that they should have gone to the boy's bathroom to change for their next class but instead went to a nearby river.
Reports are that they were the only two from the group of 10 boys who went into the river. It is understood that they were playing in a deep section of the river when they apparently got into difficulties and drowned.
When THE STAR arrived on the scene after 1:30 p.m., a large crowd including family members, police as well as staff and students of the Edwin Allen High School were seen on the banks of the river. The boys' bodies were on the banks of the Rio Minho.
Efforts to get comments from the school's principal, Everton Walters, were difficult as he, like other staff members, were too
shaken up to say much. He would only say that the school has done a lot to protect all its students from danger.
Walters said money had been spent to set up security fencing and construct walls to keep the students on the compound so it was shocking to learn that the boys forced their way out.
Fitzroy's mother, Ann-Marie Simpson, was shocked to learn of her son's death. "He is a quiet child who did not talk much and he always listens to me when I talk to him. I can't tell you how I am taking it. It is not easy. Right now I am weak to know that my son who I sent to school this morning is dead," she said, while being consoled by her mother Clair Osborne and church sister Veronica Bennett.
She said it was just last Saturday she had a talk with her son and he told her he
wanted to be a soldier. "I turned to him and said 'Fitzroy all you have to do is take your CXCs and from you get the passes you can become a soldier; and he said yes mummy, I am going to do well and become a soldier'," recalled the grieving mother.
The Frankfield police are carrying out their investigations into the incident.
