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■ SUZANNE O’CONNELL

suzanne@costablancapeople.com

A coach has crashed on the AP7 motorway whilst carrying Erasmus students back from a night-time trip to the Fallas festival in Valencia.

Tues 22nd March - Mon 28th 2016

THIRTEEN KILLED IN COACH CRASH The accident happened on Sunday 20th March very early in the morning near the village of Freginals in Catalonia and it has been released that 13 people have so far been killed. Freginals is about 10km from the regional border with Valencia.Those killed include seven Italians, two Germans, one Romanian, one French person, one from Uzbekistan and one from Austria. Altogether there were thirteen different nationalities on board. The Erasmus programme provides foreign exchange courses for students from countries within the European Union.The young people were between 22 and 29 years of age and most of them were based at the University of Barcelona. They had been participating in the ‘nit de la Cremà’ which is the highlight of the

Las Fallas celebration. The coach that crashed was one of five that had driven down to take part in the event and was the last in the convoy. Altogether there were 61 people travelling on board and a number of these suffered injuries. The site of the crash is classified as being an accident black spot and two other vehicles were also involved. The driver of the coach was unhurt after the collision and tested negative for alcohol. It is believed that the driver lost control of the coach which crossed the central reservation, to collide with vehicles coming in the other direction. It is believed that this part of the road is quite dark and also includes a curve to it, whereas the majority of this stretch of road is straight. It has been reported that the coach drifted to the right and on correcting

itself then veered in the other direction. The driver of the coach had had seventeen years experience and had never previously been involved in an accident. The coach itself appears not to have suffered from a technical fault and had all the paper work in place including ITV. It was a Whatsapp message from one of the students on the crashedcoach that alerted the others in the convoy as to what had happened to their peers. The coach that was fourth in line noticed that the lights of the final coach were no longer showing behind it and pulled into a service station. The driver tried to contact the driver of the fifth coach but when he didn’t receive an answer he asked the students to message their colleagues to find out where they were. It was then that they discovered what had happened.

YOUR CLOCKS GO FORWARD ONE HOUR SUNDAY 27TH

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