DEATH PLUNGE
A BRITISH school exchange student who plunged to his death from a seventh-floor window in Spain has been named as Max McMullen.
The 15-year-old, who is believed to have been a student at Bath school Beechen Cliff, died late on Saturday night, just two days after arriving in the city of Cordoba with a large group of pupils on a week-long exchange.
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The tragedy is still being investigated, although well-placed sources have said they think he was trying to fix a broken blind at the home of the host family he was staying with when he fell.
A National Police spokesman in Cordoba confirmed this morning: "There doesn’t appear to be any signs of criminality or evidence pointing to the involvement of anyone else."
A police source confirmed: "The dead boy is a British 15-year-old who was on a school exchange trip.
“A full report is being prepared which will be submitted to an investigating judge in charge of the judicial probe into this incident.”
SCHOOL EXCHANGE TRIP
Beechen Cliff School students began a week-long exchange trip to Cordoba, which is around 90 minutes drive north east of Seville, last Thursday.
The following day a photo showing the youngsters sat in the sun was posted on its website alongside the message: "Cordoba exchange pupils at the beginning of their visit.
"Missing our weather already."
The group shot photo, believed to include the boy who died, has now been removed from its Twitter feed.
A secretary at the school, a state-funding day and boarding school for boys, said this morning it was not making any comment when asked about the tragedy.
She was passing all calls on to the Midsomer Norton Schools’ Partnership multi-academy trust which Beechen Cliff School became part of in February this year.
No-one from the trust, which Beechen Cliff School joined after a damning Ofsted report which judged the Bath school “inadequate” last year, was immediately available for comment.
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Local education chief Inmaculada Troncoso said in a statement: “We deeply regret what has happened.
“We are offering support to the school where the boy was as well as his family.”
The apartment where the tragedy happened is in a street called Calle Periodista Quesada Chacon.
A spokesman for a regional government-run emergency services centre confirmed: “A 15-year-old youngster has died in Cordoba has died after falling from a seventh-floor bathroom window.
“We were alerted around 11.25pm last night to say a person had fallen from a window at an apartment block in Periodista Quesada Chacon Street.
“Emergency services including police and medical responders were alerted but the youngster was already dead when they arrived following what police have indicated was an accidental fall.”
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