A primary school was burglarized between last night and this morning. It is the second time in 3 months that Guadalupe RC School in Sandhill has been targeted.
This morning when the principal arrived on the school's compound she noticed that 2 of her classrooms had been broken into and were vandalized -and a number of electronic items were stolen - including a brand-new photocopying machine that was supposed to be used to print off the students exams for this coming Monday.
Esther Requena, Principal
"When we reach this morning some students were here and they shouted 'miss they broke into the school.' Two teachers were here already and so 3 of us came to the back and when we went inside it was very..... I can't find words to express how we felt at that moment. We had a brand new Lexmark photo copier that we just purchase on Tuesday. It was still in the box because today we would have run off the exams for Monday, it was gone. We notice that ideal bags and water just thrown about in the classroom. The draws just left pull open and pencils and crayons on the floor. They even break the wall for the next classroom and enter in there and they spray the wall with ideal essence (the thing that we used to make ideals). It is very disappointing and frustrating at the same time because we go out of our way to find these things to provide for our students for this to happen. That's where we are right now."
"I believe they pick the lock because the lock from the door, piece of it is missing and we see where they dug in the door to take out the lock."
Monica Bodden
"The windows, I see a couple louvers bent."
Esther Requena, Principal
"That was another incident that happened in early September. In that incident they took a lot of the snack from the snack shop; ideals, biscuits, sweets, oranges, chips. We had left some money in there, it was about $110.00. That was gone too. The police recovered a few items; a couple biscuits and ideals and nobody was ever arrested for it."
"I don't think the word frustration can really define how we feel at this moment. The sad thing as well is that we still owe for the machine, we did a down payment of $400.00, the machine is $1,600.00. We paid down $400.00 to the person that sold us, he was considerate because it was for a school, he asks us to pay in monthly installments. So that is up in the air as well, we still have to pay that and I honestly hope that the police or somebody would do something for us to recover this machine."
"We don't know where to go to get our exams copied for Monday and we do have to wait because we have to clean up the classrooms to get them prepared for Monday."
Stolen from the school was a Lexmark photocopying machine, a black projector and a computer CPU.
