A brazen daylight robbery at a public secondary school in Trinidad has ignited a mass teacher walkout and thrown longstanding, unaddressed school safety failures into the national spotlight, after an intruder easily breached a broken perimeter fence to rob a classroom teacher last week.
The incident unfolded around 2 p.m. Thursday at San Juan North Secondary School, when a bare-chested intruder wearing a jersey to conceal his face climbed through gaps in the school’s crumbling perimeter fence. He slipped into an empty classroom — students were between classes at the time, avoiding what experts warn could have been a far deadlier outcome — and confronted the female teacher inside. Ordering her to lie on the classroom floor, the intruder stole her personal valuables and vehicle key, keeping one hand hidden throughout the encounter that left the teacher uncertain whether he was carrying a weapon. After the intruder fled the compound, the teacher locked the classroom door and alerted other staff, who contacted local police, who have since launched an official investigation into the robbery.
By 1:30 p.m. the following day, fed-up teachers and students had launched a full walkout of the campus to protest the dangerous conditions that allowed the attack to occur. Hours later, a representative from the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association (TTUTA) submitted formal documentation of the school’s long-running safety hazards to the national Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA), triggering an official workplace safety review that will determine whether staff can be compelled to return to campus.
Speaking at an on-site press conference following the walkout, TTUTA president Crystal Ashe emphasized that the robbery was not an unpredictable random event — it was a preventable crisis that followed years of ignored warnings from school leadership and teacher representatives. “This teacher could have been injured. This teacher’s life could have been lost,” Ashe told reporters, noting that the intruder’s concealed hand left the victim in crippling fear for her life during the attack.
Ashe detailed that TTUTA and the school’s principal have been raising alarms about critical infrastructure and security deficits at the 900-student campus for years. A technical inspection team from the National Maintenance Training and Security Company Ltd (MTS) visited the campus in December 2024, conducted a full walkthrough, and formally flagged multiple high-risk areas requiring urgent repairs — including the broken perimeter fence and overgrown vegetation that provided intruders with perfect cover to sneak onto campus. Between that inspection and the day of the robbery, Ashe said, no remedial work was completed at all.
“She put it on the SINS platform, she wrote to the ministry, she implored them, she highlighted the urgency of it, and you know what took place so far? Nothing,” Ashe said, referring to the principal’s repeated requests for action through the Ministry of Education’s official Schools Infrastructure Management System (SINS) portal. Beyond the perimeter fence and overgrown grounds, other unaddressed hazards included broken sewer lines and unsafe electrical wiring in the school’s now-decommissioned technical-vocational training block.
Security staffing is also dangerously insufficient at the campus, Ashe argued. Currently, the school is assigned five MTS security officers and two unarmed police officers to cover the large campus and nearly 1,000 total students and staff. Ashe said the current staffing ratio is completely unfit for the size of the compound, leaving huge gaps in patrol coverage that allow intruders to enter undetected. Ashe also noted that even basic grounds maintenance has fallen apart: the San Juan-Laventille Regional Corporation, which is not legally responsible for school grounds maintenance, stepped in to cut overgrown grass because the contracted private vendor had not been paid by the ministry and refused to complete the work.
Teachers have now formally invoked occupational safety and health regulations to walk off the job, and will not return to campus until OSHA completes a full safety assessment and confirms the environment is safe for work. Ashe warned that the outcome could have been catastrophic if the intruder had entered the classroom while students were present, and called for four immediate actions to resolve the crisis: full repair or replacement of the broken perimeter fence, an increase in MTS security staffing from five to at least eight officers, clearing of all overgrown vegetation on campus, and access to free professional counselling for the traumatized teacher who was robbed. Ashe added that teaching staff have already offered to contribute financially to counselling support for their colleague if the ministry fails to cover the cost.
Ashe also criticized the absence of any Ministry of Education officials at the school in the immediate aftermath of the attack, urging political leaders to step up and fulfill their legal responsibility to keep students and staff safe. “Do not abdicate your responsibility. Please do what you need to do to ensure that our nation’s schools are safe places of learning,” he said.
In a statement provided to local outlet *Express* following the incident, Education Minister Dr Michael Dowlath acknowledged the robbery and confirmed that the ministry is aware of the security vulnerabilities at the school. Dowlath stated that the school already has a full complement of assigned MTS security staff, with supervisory oversight from a corporal, and that the robbery has been reported to the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) for ongoing investigation. He added that the ministry’s Health, Safety and Security Services Unit has already completed a preliminary review of the incident and identified the vulnerable section of the rear perimeter fence that the intruder used to access the campus. “This is being addressed as part of the Ministry’s ongoing approach to strengthening security arrangements at the school,” Dowlath said, noting that the ministry has formal protocols for coordinating with school administrators, security staff, and law enforcement to respond to security incidents and adjust safety measures where needed. “The Ministry will continue to work with the relevant stakeholders to strengthen security arrangements where required,” he added.