The series of events at River Valley High School: Sec 4 boy with axe asks other students to call the police

Singapore — Speaking in Parliament on Tuesday (Jul 27), Education Minister Chan Chun Sing outlined the timeline of the incident that took place at River Valley High School last week (Jul 19).

A 16-year-old student allegedly killed a 13-year-old student on campus with an axe.

These are the details given by Mr Chan:

At 11.35am, towards the end of lunch break, a group of students encounters a 16-year-old student outside a toilet. The Sec 4 student is holding an axe and asks the rest to call the police. The students return to their classroom and inform their teacher.

The Sec 4 student then asks another group of students in the classroom next to the same toilet to call the police. The students’ immediate response is the emergency ‘Run-Hide-Tell’ lockdown drill – they go into their classroom, lock the doors and call their form teachers for help.

A teacher arrives at the scene and tells the student to put down the axe. The student complies and is escorted away to a meeting room. Other teachers call the police and check the toilet.

About 10 minutes later, the police arrive and take the 16-year-old Sec 4 student into custody.

Police officers and Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) paramedics find a 13-year-old Sec 1 student lying motionless in the toilet with multiple wounds. They pronounce him dead on scene.

Mr Chan noted that preliminary investigations by the police show that the two students had not known each other before the incident and that the axe was bought online.

The day after the incident (Jul 20), the 16-year-old student is charged in court with murder and is now in remand for psychiatric assessment.

On Jul 19, once the situation was deemed to be under control, the principal broke the news to the rest of the staff then to the students.

The principal then separately spoke to the group of students who were most affected by the incident.

At 3.15pm that day, the school progressively dismissed students and stationed teachers at the school gates to speak to parents and students.

In the evening of Jul 19, parents were informed that a student has died. /TISG