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Boy, 16, Stabbed Inside Toronto-Area High School; Student Arrested

Posted on: Wednesday, 16 January 2008, 00:00 CST

By Allison Jones, THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO - Just days after a report shone a light on the staggering number of students who fall victim to violence and sexual assaults in Toronto schools a 16-year-old boy was stabbed Tuesday inside a Toronto-area high school.

The victim wasn't a student at Chinguacousy Secondary School in Brampton, Ont., but a 17-year-old boy arrested hours later does attend the school, Peel Regional police said.

The victim was stabbed four times in the neck and side around 10 a.m. and was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening, but serious, injuries, said Const. J.P. Valade.

The school was locked down for some two hours as police searched the area, some 45 kilometres northwest of Toronto. Classes continued as scheduled in the afternoon.

The stabbing comes on the heels of a report on school safety, released last Thursday, that urges fresh thinking on how to best protect students.

The 1,000-page report, penned by a panel formed in the wake of the May 2006 shooting death of Jordan Manners, 15, inside his Toronto high school, uncovered an alarming number of unreported incidents of violence and sexual harassment at specific schools in Toronto.

It recommended closer monitoring of school front doors, ensuring all other doors remain locked from the outside, and a provincial portfolio dedicated to monitoring school safety.

It also called for the use of dogs to sniff out guns hidden in school lockers.

Commenting on the report for the first time at an unrelated press conference on Tuesday, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said he has discussed the issues with Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.

"We have to treat the report seriously," he said.

"A tremendous amount of time and thought went into that report, so we'll carefully consider the recommendations that have been brought forward."

Tuesday's stabbing wasn't Chinguacousy Secondary School's first brush with potentially lethal violence.

In November 2005, an 18-year-old student was shot, but not fatally, in Chinguacousy's parking lot while sitting in his car just before 8 a.m.

Brian Woodland, director of communications for the Peel District School Board, said Chinguacousy Secondary School, as well as other schools in the district, are safe, with security cameras, Crimestoppers programs and locked doors.

"You never take safety for granted," Woodland said.

"We continue to work at it, but this remains as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow: a safe place for students to come and learn and for staff to come and work."

While some schools have experimented with lanyards or ID badges to identify who belongs in the school, Woodland said they prefer to focus on prevention.

Annie Kidder, with People for Education, said prevention and social programs are exactly where the focus should be. There shouldn't be a demand for metal detectors or ID badges any time there is a violent incident in a school, she said.

"Sometimes the knee-jerk response isn't the most helpful, the most long-lasting or the one that really results in systemic change," she said.

"If we think about it just in isolation or just in the knee-jerk reaction way, our tendency has been to figure out more ways to lock up our schools, as if to isolate schools from the reality of the communities in which they exist."

Woodland said security is already tight at many Peel district schools, and beyond that responsibility falls on the shoulders of the students and staff themselves.

"If you look at society as a whole, schools remain among the most secure places in the community," Woodland said.

"I think that's in part why we're so shocked when something does happen."

Source: Canadian Press

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