The search for an 11-year-old British girl who disappeared during a school trip near Dieppe was stepped up yesterday as French police searched a lake where she was last seen.
Bunmi Shagaya went missing from an adventure centre at Cany Barville on Monday afternoon during a trip with 40 other pupils and seven teachers from Hillmead Primary School, in Lambeth, south London. It was Bunmi's first holiday abroad and the last known sighting was by a local woman who saw her beside a lake at the adventure centre drying herself with a towel.
More than 100 officers and a helicopter have been drafted in to take part in the search for the girl. A fingertip search of nearby fields was continuing yesterday while divers searched the manmade lake, which is full of weeds in places. Cutting equipment was brought in to remove some of the weeds and a sniffer dog traced her scent to a nearby play area.
French police are not certain, however, whether Bunmi drowned or was abducted.
It is thought two members of staff were supervising 16 pupils at the lake and other teachers were looking after the rest of the school children nearby. The school said its teacher/pupil ratio was 1:7, which was better than government guidelines recommending a ratio of 1:10 on school trips.
Family members, including Bunmi's mother, visited the adventure centre and lake and her father is expected to travel from Nigeria to France soon. In an statement, the family said: "Life is not the same" without the little girl and they were in "great pain" over her disappearance.
"Anyone who has Bunmi in their care please bring her back to her family. The family misses her and feels great pain that she has been missing for two days," the statement said.
A man spotted naked in a white van near the lake where Bunmi disappeared was last night released from custody, a French police source said.
The man in his 40s was arrested after a young girl reported seeing him less than three miles from the lake about four hours after the disappearance.