Teenage girl in Guyana charged as adult with 19 counts of murder in dormitory fire
A teenage student who police in Guyana accuse of deliberately setting a fire in a girl’s dormitory that killed 18 schoolmates and a five-year-old boy was charged Monday as an adult with 19 counts of murder.
The 15-year-old girl was virtually present at the hearing at a court south of the capital, Georgetown, and was ordered detained pending further court proceedings.
Investigators believe she started the fire at Mahdia Secondary School on May 21 in retaliation for the administrator’s confiscation of her cellphone. The government boarding school serves the country’s isolated Indigenous villages in the southwest.
The defendant was not allowed to enter a plea to the accusations and will appear in court again on July 5 to signal if the state and defense attorneys are ready to begin a preliminary trial. If convicted, the defendant faces life in jail.
The fire broke out at the school shortly before midnight. More than a dozen pupils were hurt, while at least 20 others were rescued from the highly iron-grilled building. One of the badly injured students was airlifted to a New York hospital for specialized care, while the most were released.
The keys from inside were used to lock all five doors.
According to National Security Advisor Gerald Gouveia, the dorm administrator, or house mother, locked all the doors to prevent female pupils aged 12 to 18 from sneaking out to interact with adult males in the mining town. As the fire raged through the structure, she panicked and struggled with the keys.
