As the academic year culminates to an end and students find themselves looking forward to going home, it turned ugly for students at Madang Technical College (Matec).
In an unfortunate turn of events last night a final year student of Matec fell victim to thugs yet again.
James Lotu, a second year Building & Construction (Carpentry) student was stabbed by four settlement youths last night in front of the school gate. James is from East New Britain Province and was bound for home, coming Sunday.
According to Deputy Principal (Academic) Gabriel Poska, the incident occurred in front of his house where he witnessed the whole incident. Poska stated that at around 8:15pm, the victim came from the opposite direction where the administration building located, trying to head back to the dormitories.
Two of the perpetrators came under the pretense of buying betelnut and smoke from the side market at the gate whilst the other two lurked in the dark. As the student passed by them to get into the gate, they pounced on him with knives, stabbing him from the back and the abdomen area. They then snatched his bag and ran off towards the Govstore settlement. The injured student chased them as his bag contained cash that was sent by his parents to pay for the ticket back home, but collapsed in the middle.
He was rushed to the hospital by Poska and some students, however, died in the early hours of the morning (3am) due to the severity of the knife wounds and loss of blood.
Mr. Poska when interviewed raised concerns about the time it took for medical staff at the hospital to attend to the wounded student. He said they arrived at the hospital at around 8:30pm but were attended to at 10pm after the change of shift.
He expressed frustration at the slow response by duty staff who didn’t treat the injured student with urgency.
Poska claims the duty staff instead scorned the accompanying students not to push him to attend to them while he was working. Students recorded this conversation and have video footages of these claims.
The doctor on call after 10pm struggled to resuscitate young James by cleaning him up and giving him blood but to no avail.
Meanwhile, the Provincial Police Commander Acting Superintendent Robert Baim was on site by 5am to quell the situation as students wanted to retaliate.
Baim spoke to the staff and students to allow police to deal with the situation.
He also called on the settlers to hand over the suspects to police by today.
The community was swift in responding. They identified and handed over three suspects to police in the morning.
The suspects were about to leave Madang when some members of the community followed them and handed them over to police.
According to PPC Baim, police are working around the clock to capture the last suspect who is allegedly in hiding at the Banana Block. Two suspects had their family homes torched by community members, demonstrating their frustration for the ongoing lawlessness caused by these youths.
The situation on ground is currently stable as police continue to monitor the vicinity to ensure no further violence comes about.