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 | | Friday, 1 March, 2002, 18:22 GMT Charges brought over boat death  Elizabeth Bee (left) with her sister Victoria A teacher and a private school are to be prosecuted over the death of a nine-year-old girl who drowned while on a school boating trip. Elizabeth Bee, a pupil of Boundary Oak School, Fareham, Hampshire, died when a motorboat she was in sank in Portsmouth Harbour in September 1999. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had decided not to prosecute the teacher in charge of the boat. Now the teacher and school have been summoned to appear in court to face charges brought under the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 after other evidence came to light.
An inquest jury had returned a verdict of accidental death contributed to by neglect in June 2001 on Elizabeth Bee. Elizabeth and her twin sister Victoria were with seven other children and their 64-year-old teacher Paul Dove when their boat capsized. Conditions in the morning were too bad to sail, but the decision had been taken in the afternoon to take a small party out, although the wind was still force four to five. Mr Dove set off with the nine children in a flat-bottomed 14ft boat known as a dory. Thrown clear Elizabeth became trapped underneath the hull of the boat, while the other children and the teacher were thrown clear. Mr Dove faces one charge of failure to take adequate precautions to protect the health and safety of people in his care. The school is charged with failure to ensure the health and safety of its employee, Mr Dove, and with failure to ensure the health and safety of people not in their employment, the schoolchildren. Mr Dove and representatives of the school are due to appear before magistrates at Portsmouth on 11 March. | |   See also: Internet links: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top England stories now:  Links to more England stories are at the foot of the page. | |||||||||||||||||||
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