A GRADE One pupil is lucky to be alive after staying for two months with a piece of pencil in his head which broke off when he was allegedly stabbed by his teacher at Hugh Beadle Primary School in Bulawayo.
The incident reportedly took place in front of the whole class on 12 March, when Mrs Sibongile Nyathi allegedly stabbed the six-year-old boy for failing to space words in sentences using his finger.
Surgeons at United Bulawayo Hospitals and Mpilo Central Hospital failed to detect that the pencil had broken off inside the boy’s head until the piece came out of the wound which was not healing on its own two months later.
Mrs Nyathi, who was initially set to appear before a Bulawayo magistrate to answer to a charge of ill-treatment, neglect and violence against children, will soon be in court facing a more serious charge after prosecutors said the police had given her a lenient charge.
The prosecutors also said the matter still needed further investigation, as the comments from the doctors were missing from the docket.