A French magistrate will investigate whether appropriate supervision was provided during a school trip, after the search for a British schoolgirl, Bunmi Shagaya, ended yesterday with the discovery of her body in a lake.
Three days after she disappeared from the lakeside beach at the Le Lac de Caniel adventure centre near Cany Barville in northern France, a police officer discovered Bunmi's body floating in the water close to the swimming area, about 20 ft from where she was last seen. Bunmi had been on her first trip abroad with 40 other pupils from Hillmead Primary School in Lambeth, south London, when she disappeared on Monday afternoon after swimming in the manmade lake.
Members of Bunmi's family identified her body after French divers carried her body from the lake. At one point, as she stood beside the lake, Bunmi's mother broke down and wept and was heard asking: "Why did this have to happen? Her spirit is still in there."
Lambeth Council has ordered an independent inquiry into Bunmi's death.
Administrative circulars governing supervision on school trips are "very precisely written", an official from the French embassy in London said. There must be at least one adult supervising no more than 10 children, and at least one adult member of the group must have a first aid certificate. The French investigation will examine the level of adult supervision on the trip, and if rules were not followed teachers could be prosecuted.
More than 100 officers were involved in the search for Bunmi, who was described by a family member as a good swimmer, but police said murky waters of the lake and the plantlife at the bottom complicated the investigation.
"The body had probably drowned and had gone to the bottom where there were a lot of aquatic grasses," said Lieut Col Gabriel de Boisseson, one of the senior police officers in the investigation, after questions were raised about why Bunmi's body had not been discovered earlier. "When the body was spotted it was on the surface, but before it must have been on the bottom, otherwise my officers would have seen it."
Distressed and emotional, Bunmi's classmates and teachers returned to Hillmead school where there was a low-key reunion with their families. The school party arrived in south London early yesterday morning, and the local Labour MP, Ms Tessa Jowell, described the moment when parents met their children as one of "unbearable poignancy".