World News | Guyana girls dormitory fire kills 19, students deliberately set it on fire, officials say

GEORGE TOWN, May 24 (AP) Investigators in Guyana believe a student deliberately set a fire that killed 19 girls, mostly girls, trapped in a school dormitory, a senior official said Tuesday. Feeling uneasy about having your phone confiscated.

National Security Adviser Gerald Gouveia said the suspect in the fire late Sunday was one of several people injured after he was arrested by dormitory administrators for an affair with an older man. disciplinary action. The student allegedly threatened to set the dormitory on fire and later set fire to the bathroom area, Gouveia said.

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Gouveia said the fire spread through the wood, concrete and iron grille building after dormitory administrators, or wardens, tried to prevent the girls from sneaking out for the night.

The girl, about 14 years old, suffered burns in the fire and is being treated at a hospital in the area. Leslie Ramsammy, a health ministry adviser, said she was expected to be released from the hospital this week and placed in juvenile detention until she came of age.

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“She did it out of love for them. She felt compelled to do it because many of them left the building at night to socialize,” Gouvia told The Associated Press.

“This is a very sad situation, but the State Government will work with students and families to give them all the support they need.”

All but one victim were indigenous girls aged 12 to 18 from remote villages who attended boarding schools in Mahdia, a mining community near the Brazilian border. The remaining victim was the homeowner’s five-year-old son.

Many victims were trapped as the building burned, although firefighters were able to rescue people by punching a hole in one of the walls.

“The landlord’s mother was asleep in the building but panicked and couldn’t find the correct key to open the building from the inside, but she managed. She also lost her five-year-old child in the fire,” Gouveia said.

Many of the nine people hospitalized are in serious condition.

Gouveia said police were expected to charge the man with the student’s relationship with statutory rape because she was under 16.

Gouveia said the Guyanese government had accepted a U.S. offer to send a team of forensic and other experts to assist in the investigation. The government also sent DNA experts to help identify the remains of 13 of the 19 victims who died at the scene.

“At this time, leaders from all over the world have been helping us. On Monday, when President Ali was in Madiya, they were calling and texting,” Gouvia said.

Madhia is a gold and diamond mining town about 200 miles from the capital, George Town.

Deputy Fire Chief Dwayne Scotland told The Associated Press that more lives could have been saved if the fire service had been informed of the blaze sooner. Residents were trying unsuccessfully to extinguish the fire and evacuate people when firefighters arrived, he said.

“The building is well engulfed,” he said.

This week’s dormitory fire eclipsed the country’s deadliest recent blaze, which killed 17 inmates at the main Georgetown jail in 2016. Angered by trial delays and overcrowding, some inmates set fire to the building, which had a capacity for 500 people but contained 1,100, killing 17 and seriously injuring about a dozen others. (Associated Press)

(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)