School, teachers to pay Dhs 200,000 in Sharjah child drowning case

Mohammed Barakat, Staff Reporter

The Sharjah Misdemeanours Court fined a female teacher Dhs140,000 out of the diya in addition to Dhs5,000. The female teacher and others were convicted of causing the drowning of a 4-year-old boy, KHA, in the swimming pool of a Sharjah private school.

The second suspect, the sports teacher and his assistant were fined Dhs30,000 each, out of the Diya and Dhs5,000 for the same charge.

Details date back to when Al Shamil industrial area police station received a telephone call from Al Qasimi Hospital on the death of a student.

The criminal investigation team and the investigating officer of the police station rushed to a school to investigate the incident.

Sharjah Misdemeanours Court in previous sessions charged the owner of the school, AM with negligence, leaving the place without any supervision or protection and leaving the doors leading to the pool open, which caused the drowning of the child. The owner denied the charges, saying that the place was provided with all measures of safety.

The court also confronted the suspects from the second to the sixth with the charge of causing the death of the child by mistake but they denied it.

The child’s father said during the interrogations he told the school that his son was very active and did not master swimming, but they neglected safety procedures, which caused his drowning and death.

The father added that on the day of the incident he received a phone call from the school informing him that his son was ill. Then he received another call from Al Qasimi Hospital.

He added he tried to communicate with the school but to no avail, so he sent his other son to the hospital to know what happened.

The school principal said he was in a meeting when he was informed that a student was drowning in the swimming pool so he went to the clinic to check him. He then called the ambulance which took the child to the hospital. He added that investigations showed that the students left the swimming pool for the clothes changing room when they found the child in the swimming pool.