No fewer than forty persons sustained various degrees of injuries on Friday when a teargas canister exploded at Community Secondary School , CCS , Oroworoku in Port Harcourt City Local Government Area of Rivers State.
Eyewitness account had it that the incident happened when a male student came to school with a teargas canister.
The eyewitness said the student gathered some of his friends from the school to display the canister to them but mistakenly torched the canister trigger which exploded instantly.
The witness said that the loud noise from the canister coupled with its accompanied tear smoke caused pandemonium in the school just as all the students who were hauled up in the first floor of the two storey building out of panic started jumping down from the first floor.
He said scores of students sustained injuries in the process.
The Rivers State Police Command Public Relation Officer, Nnamdi Omoni, a DSP, confirmed the story.
He said that a 17 year-old student of the school took a teargas canister belonging to his deceased uncle who was a Policeman to school.
He said that many of the students that sustained injuries were taken to the hospital while the culprit who also sustained injury was arrested.
He dismissed the rumour that the incident was a terrorist attack saying that the Command has launched a full scale investigation into the matter.