Andrea Downer, Gleaner Writer
A student of St. Simon's Basic School on Penn Street, Jones Town, stands in front of a bullet-riddled wall yesterday. Rival gangs of Penn and Benbow streets mounted a pre-dawn, three-hour gunfight in the south St. Andrew community, which prevented St. Simon's from opening. - PHOTOS BY ANDREW SMITH/PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR
WHEN A trickle of children turned up at the St. Simon's Basic School in Jones Town yesterday morning, an eerie stillness hung over the deserted compound.
Just a few hours earlier, rival gunmen from Benbow and Penn streets in the south St. Andrew community had turned the school into a war zone, punching holes into buildings and the perimeter wall.
The police said they collected a large quantity of spent shells from various high-powered weapons in the schoolyard, and the gunmen also detonated Molotov cocktail bombs.
Residents recounted that shortly after midnight on Monday thugs turned the school into a battlefield, sending neighbouring homeowners scurrying under beds.
One woman, who has lived in the community for 30 years, said the gun battle was the worst of her lifetime.
"Mi haffi tek off mi baby and push mi baby under the bed," she said, her voice trembling.
Another woman was shot in her side while she slept. Her husband, worry creasing his face, explained that when he heard the first shots ring out, he rolled off the bed and tried to pull his wife down with him. However, she continued to sleep.
"Is when she get the shot, she wake up and called out to me that she got shot," he said.
As police units and an armoured carrier patrolled the area yesterday, Beverley Brown, principal of the St. Simon's Basic School, was slumped on a chair in disconsolateness. She said when she came to school yesterday, she almost fainted.
'MY KNEES JUST GAVE WAY'
"When I saw the condition that the school was in, my knees just gave way; I don't think I can live with this," she said.
Brown mourned the deaths of young men who have died from the long-running gang feud, some of whom she had taught.
"After being in this profession for 38 years, to see those very guys that I have taught lying dead on the streets, it has affected me," she lamented.
The principal refused to say when the school would reopen, but was adamant that she would not do so until the violence ends.
