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Caribbean runaways to leave English boarding school

by Reuters
Saturday, 25 January 2014 15:13 GMT

LONDON, Jan 25 (Reuters) - Two teenagers who sparked a global police search when they ran away from an exclusive English boarding school to jet off on a five-star holiday in the Caribbean will not be returning to the school, the headmaster said on Saturday.

Edward Bunyan, 16, and Indira Gainiyeva, 17, were missing for a week after slipping away in the middle of the night from 400-year-old Stonyhurst College in Lancashire and using credit cards provided by their parents to fund their travels.

They told friends they were sick of the cold and rain in northern England, newspapers said. They were finally found safe and well at a holiday resort in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic last Sunday.

Fellow pupils had taken to Twitter using the hashtags #WheresBunyan and #WheresIndira to swap news of the pair whose antics made front-page news.

Stonyhurst headmaster Andrew Johnson said he was delighted they had been found but that they would not be returning to the school, which counts Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle among its alumni and has annual fees running to about 30,000 pounds ($50,000).

"After what they have done, their ... position at Stonyhurst is untenable. The parents will, therefore, be withdrawing their children," he said in a statement.

"Both young people have expressed their regret for the trouble they have caused, and both families wish to thank the police and other authorities for assisting them in finding their children safe and sound." (Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith; Editing by Pravin Char)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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