Quarterley

Toronto Star, Oct. 21, 2004


Bunches left on sidewalk by school
Police fear incident a copycat crime


PAUL MORSE
TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE

HAMILTON—Parents and educators are street-proofing children after a girl was injured by flowers booby-trapped with razors outside an east-end elementary school.

Now, police have asked for the community's assistance "in solving this heinous crime."

Police are worried the incident is a copycat crime in the wake of razor blades found hidden in a beach volleyball court in Toronto last month, and shards of glass found glued to a children's slide at a Burlington public park this month.

Rema Salisbury, 10, was walking to W.H. Ballard school yesterday morning when she came upon two bunches of brightly coloured silk flowers on the sidewalk across the street from the school. But she didn't see the broken heads of rusty razors glued against the stems where a hand would grab them.

"I was going to give them to my Grade 5 teacher," the girl said last night in Hamilton General Hospital's emergency ward as she waited for blood tests and injections against hepatitis and tetanus.

"I picked them up and started to pick the glue off and then I cut my finger.

"Then I just dropped them and ran into the school and told the principal. Now I have to get two needles."

Said Melody Ellis, Rema's mother: "What kind of a sick person leaves stuff where they know children will be walking? I was so shocked."

Rema's thumb was not badly cut, but health officials want to make sure she doesn't develop an infection.

Parents picking up their children outside the school yesterday said the idea someone would try to hurt a child was beyond belief.

School officials held assemblies to warn children about picking up strange objects. As well, students received letters asking parents to follow up talking about safety, said school principal Janet Van Duzen.

"Obviously we're taking this very seriously because this is unacceptable, people preying on children in our community," said police spokesperson Sergeant Carol Pacey.

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Well, Halloween is coming up. Watch these people make razor candies again for Trick or Treaters again.

Cail

This kind of thing disturbs me, especially since Halloween is right around the corner and we've all heard the urban legend about razors in the candy.

Shards of glass on a children's slide? That's so low.

Ambular

My boyfriend was also telling me that he found used needles on a children's playground that someone had just left there. And to think that a little kid could pick it up or step on it and possibly get Hepatitis or, God forbid, AIDS from it. Obviously people who do things like that are completely aware that they're putting children at serious risk like that, and it's disgusting. But to go as far as gluing shards of glass to their slides, or on the ground? That's absolutely beyond disturbing that someone would go that far out of their way to hurt a child

What's even sicker is that some of these people actually have kids of their own!

Mandy Renay

That's really awful. It's like when there for awhile people were finding needles and stuff in those play-balls in Chuck E Cheese and places. It's twisted enough to want to do things like that in the first place, much less to children. And actually taking the time to deliberately do things like gluing glass on a slide or putting razors in flowers for children to pick? Ugh. That is so beyond messed up.

I work in childcare and the thought of someone doing things like that to 'my kids' is just terrible. (Well any kids of course, I'm just saying.)

pacifierrocks

i think the things that bothers me the most about this is that this is all on purpose. The fact that druggies are leaving needles in playgrounds are disturbing enough, but i don't really think they're deliberatly trying to hurt little kids. These people that are gluing broken glass on slides and putting razors in flowers is just horrible. what kind of person would do something like this?

LittleMilkJug

Just sick.

Quarterley

It's even sicker when the people who do stuff like this end up not being mentally unstable...they just did it for fun or to "see what would happen".

Wiva

that is horrible.

CrabbyCancer69

That is a horrible thing...but sadly no, it doesn't surprise me. People out there are sick