Student accused of setting deadly girls’ dormitory fire in Guyana

Sunday’s overnight inferno killed 19 people, many of whom were indigenous students from rural parts of the country.

Officials in Guyana have revealed it was a student who allegedly started a deadly fire that ripped through the dormitory of a girls’ boarding school, killing 19 people.

The fire, which broke out late Sunday evening, was one of the deadliest in recent years for the South American country. About nine people remain in hospital, many in serious condition.

National security adviser Gerald Gouveia told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the blaze started with a teenage student who was angry that her cell phone was confiscated after it was discovered she was having an affair with an older man.

Gouveia explained that the student, who is under the age of 16, started the fire in the bathroom of the dormitory. Leslie Ramsammy, an adviser to Guyana’s Ministry of Health, confirmed that the suspect was treated in hospital for burns and is expected to be released into juvenile detention.

Gouveia added that the man allegedly in a relationship with the student is expected to be charged with rape.

News of the suspect’s identification was echoed by the mayor of Mahdia, the gold mining town where the boarding school is located. “I can confirm that the fire was started by a student,” Mayor David Adams told Reuters news agency on Tuesday.

Police had treated the inferno as suspicious, after an initial investigation suggested it was “set maliciously“.

Many of the victims were indigenous girls between the ages of 12 and 18 who came from towns like Madhia, as well as villages like Micobie, Campbelltown, and El Paso.

Five of the 19 deaths died at Mahdia District Hospital, while the others died at the school itself. The youngest dead was the five-year-old son of the dormitory’s janitor.

Clifton Hicken, Guyana’s police commissioner, said 13 bodies had been referred for DNA identification after being badly charred. Post-mortem examinations had been completed on the six others, he added.

In the aftermath of the fire, President Irfaan Ali has declared three days of national mourning. “This is a major disaster. This is horrific, it is painful,” he said in a press release. He has since met some of the parents of the deceased.

The fire quickly swept through the southwestern part of Mahdia Secondary School, about 320 km south of the capital Georgetown.

Gouveia, the national security adviser, said the dormitory was locked for the night to prevent the students from sneaking out.

The janitor slept as the fire grew rapidly, Gouveia explained, and when she awoke, she panicked and struggled to find the right keys to open the door.

Guyana’s fire and rescue service said so received a phone call at approximately 23:15 local time on Sunday (3:15 GMT Monday). “It took the firefighters four minutes to get to the scene,” said a government press release. “However, the building completely went up in flames.”

Firefighters were nevertheless able to save about 20 people by punching holes in the walls of the building to get students to safety.