Stabbed, robbed student loses case against UWI

A student who sued The University of the West Indies (The UWI) for negligence after being robbed and stabbed while studying on the Mona campus 11 years ago, lost his case after a Supreme Court judge found that he failed to provide sufficient evidence that the institution had breached its duty of care or been lax in its security obligations.

According to the evidence in the case, the student was studying at a gazebo between the Confucius Institute and the Carimac Annex Lab on June 29, 2015, when two men came up to him and stole his laptop. They stabbed him twice in his chest and once in his abdomen, about 100 metres from a manned security booth at the campus’s post office entrance which, the student said, was within his line of sight. He said that before he was cut, he was not aware that the attackers were armed.

According to the account of another student, who was a witness in the matter, the two men had first appeared on bikes and called out to them “asking for free Wi-Fi”. She said her colleague responded and the two men rode away but returned on foot some moments later and sat in front of them. She said one of the men then demanded the male student’s laptop. She said when he reached for the laptop to secure it, the man pulled a knife and cut him on his arm while the other man attacked her.