A teacher was killed in a school holiday coach crash yesterday which left a 13-year-old girl in a coma.
Peter Rippington, 59, died when the coach bringing the school party home from a ski trip overturned on a motorway in northern France.
His wife Sharon and their daughter Amy, 24, were among 27 injured, four of them seriously.
Police investigating the crash have questioned the British driver amid claims that he might have fallen asleep at the wheel before the 2.30am crash.
Terrified pupils from Alvechurch Church of England Middle School in Alvechurch, Worcestershire, told how they were jolted awake to find their coach ‘airborne’ after it apparently careered across the road, hit a crash barrier and overturned down a steep embankment.
Police believe maths and PE teacher Mr Rippington was thrown out.
Chalons-en-Champagne prosecutor Christian de Rocquigny said today that 11 people remained in hospital, six of them seriously injured but he added that their condition was not life threatening.
He said the 13-year-old girl, named by friends as Suzie Warner, had been transferred for treatment at the Necker children’s hospital in Paris where she had undergone an operation.
Those seriously injured included two other children and a second teacher.
Police officers were on duty at all three entrances to the middle school as pupils arrived at the site today, which is also home to Crown Meadow First School and Alvechurch Library.
Many of those entering the campus paused to read notes of sympathy attached to dozens of bunches of flowers in memory of Mr Rippington left around a flagpole inside the school grounds.
A photograph of the teacher with his wife Sharon had also been placed near the tributes.
Past and present pupils paid tribute to the ‘inspirational’ teacher they affectionately called ‘Mr Rip’.
Poignantly, he had told pupils he planned to retire in April after a 30-year career and that the ski holiday would be his last major school trip.
The group of 29 pupils and 19 adults were travelling 440 miles from their annual half-term ski holiday in Valle d’Aosta, Italy, to Calais. Their coach was on the A26, nicknamed the ‘autoroute des Anglais’, 90 miles east of Paris, when the accident happened.
Passengers from a second coach, not believed to be connected to the school, helped pull children from the wreckage and alerted the emergency services.
Suzie Warner’s brother Joseph, 16, sent out a series of heart-rending Twitter messages asking people to pray for his ‘beautiful sister’.
Health workers said one 12-year-old girl had broken her shoulder and others were treated for fractures, cuts from broken glass and shock.
