WHILE most children turned up to school on Monday – albeit to classes with no teachers, in many cases – eight-year-old Javan Price, who was shot in the head last month, was discharged from hospital.

On August 16, Price was hit in the head and a friend of his, an 11-year-old boy, was shot twice in the leg when gunmen chased a 38-year-old Morvant man after murdering another man.

In a WhatsApp conversation with Newsday, Price’s mother Marcia Burke thanked the medical staff who treated him.

“Javan came home on Monday. I want to thank the doctors at Port of Spain General Hospital and the neurologist and nurses at the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex.”

Javan was transferred to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex the night he was shot, after his condition stabilised.

Burke said her son was doing “really good” and is making a full recovery.

Two days after he was shot, doctors operated on the child after the bullet went straight through his head, fracturing his skull.

Police reported that at about 7 pm on August 16, gunmen got out of a grey Nissan AD wagon at Mon Repos, Morvant and started shooting, hitting 49-year-old Eusibio Roberts, killing him instantly.

The killers then chased and shot at the 38-year-old man, who ran through a basketball court where Price and other children were training for a football competition.

Price was shot in the left side of the head, and the other child twice in the leg. They were taken to the Eric Williams Medical Sciences Complex.

The other child, Burke’s neighbour, had one bullet pass through his leg and the other was lodged near a bone.

That was the second and final shooting for the month in which children were injured by stray bullets. On August 1, a ten-year-old girl was among eight people hurt during a shootout at Sixth Avenue, Malick. The bullet hit her left leg, breaking a bone.

She too missed school on Monday after her mother chose to use the school’s distance learning, birthed out of the pandemic. The standard four student is expected to undergo physiotherapy later this month and her cast may be removed. She will attend school physically then, her mother said.

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