From Andrew Drummond,
Bangkok
June 30 2011
Three young British men on a gap year trip together were killed outright in Thailand when their tourist coach was involved in a head on collision with another bus.
A fourth teenager also travelling with the same group arrived back in London early today suffering from minor injuries and shock.
The accident happened late Monday near the provincial town of Kamphaeng Phet in Northern Thailand. The young students, all from London, were reported to have been killed instantly.
They were named as Bruno Melling-Firth, 19, Conrad Quashie, 19, and Max Boomgaarden-Cook, 19, who all knew each other from The Charter School in Dulwich. They had been saving for months to pay for their “trip of a lifetime” and had flown out to Thailand from Heathrow last Thursday.
Some forty other people were also injured in the crash. The coach was taking tourists, including some from Korea and China to the northern capital of Chiang Mai when it collided with a normal Thai passenger bus heading south on the same route.
The four men, part of a larger group of young students , some of whom had already travelled on to Indonesia, had intended visiting Thailand’s northern hill tribe areas.
The BBC executive father of one of the students who had gone on to Indonesia said: ‘The surviving lad is very traumatised and I think is going to see the parents of those who died. I am sure he does not want to talk at this stage.’
Thailand’s road safety reputation is bad. There are over 12,000 fatalities from road accidents every year, and usually about 350 during the annual New Year period.
Reports say alcohol is a major contributing factor but drivers are not educated in lane control and will generally overtake in any lane available.
They had been saving for months to pay for their ""trip of a lifetime"" BBC executive father of one of the students. from the elite charter school. Sounds like dramatic writing! Would have been nicer to them to have just stated that some close friends from the charter school having a gap year holiday to Thailand were killed when the tour bus they were travelling on had a serious accident involving another bus. The three friends were killed in the crash. One reporter states the Bus hit the back of a normal bus, another reporter states it was hit from behind by another bus! Have seen no Photographs yet! A sad but common event in Thailand.
The Daily Mail updated their story to read
""the coach in which they were travelling from Bangkok to the northern town of Chiang Mai was hit from behind by a bus.""
Their photos show this was not a head-on crash.
Doesn't change anything for the families, very tragic.
Well this is quite normal in news situations facts get corrected as the day progresses. Its not a perfect world – but details on this changed very fast once the story got out – which was days after the accident. Not reported in the Bangkok Post until published in the UK.