From a long-lost satirical news blog I once ran:
Rebuilt school named after arsonist
The Jude Louey Parker Secondary School will reopen tomorrow, 12 months after it was ravaged by fire.
Every building was destroyed last year when former student Jude Louey Parker set fire to it to “get revenge on the teachers”.
It was announced in October that the school would be renamed in his honour when the Government pledged $14 million to rebuild it.
The new facility is now one of the most technologically advanced schools in the Southern Hemisphere.
Principal Trevor Diamond-Wright said rather than simply see Parker as a criminal, students should recognise his enormous contribution to their education.
“Yes he was expelled 8 years ago, yes he hospitalised a fellow student, yes he stole my new car and burnt it out, but if it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t have these state-of-the art new facilities,” he said.
Parker, 23, has a history of pyromania and has also served time in prison for affray, assault with a deadly weapon, dealing a drug of dependence and not wearing a helmet when riding his bicycle.
Mr Diamond-Wright said a statue honouring Parker would be unveiled at an assembly tomorrow.
“It’s a new beginning for us here at the Jude Louey Parker Secondary College,” he said.
“Everyone can now look forward to a quality education, the kind that Jude Louey was denied due to the abysmal facilities that existed when he was a student here.”
Parker, who recently bit the ear off a prison guard, is due for sentencing in March.