Students mourn drowned classmates

STUDENTS of Siparia Senior Comprehensive School bowed their heads in mournful silence yesterday as they paid their respects to their schoolmates Nikela Rogers and Rafi Fermin, both of whom drowned over the weekend.

Vice-Principal Vernon Persad told Newsday the school population observed a minute’s silence for the drowned pupils during yesterday morning’s assembly. Rogers and Fermin drowned after midday on Saturday at Morne Diablo beach. Their bodies were discovered washed ashore some 12 hours later. Fermin, of Robert Village, Siparia, was spending the weekend with Rogers at her Morne Diablo home.

The girls, both 16, were form five students at Siparia Senior Comprehensive. “This is a very tragic event and we are all affected by it,” a sombre sounding Persad told Newsday yesterday. He added that while the school did not have a guidance counsellor, the drowned teens’ form teacher would speak and counsel the other students of that form. Meanwhile, autopsies were expected to be carried out on both bodies yesterday at the Forensic Science Centre, Federation Park, St James.  Newsday was told that Rogers will be buried today at the Batchiya Village Cemetery, Penal, following a funeral service at the Morne Diablo Anglican Church starting at 2 pm. Fermin will be buried tomorrow.