A 10-year-old girl who died on a school trip was ‘submerged’ in a mudslide that looked ‘like a lava flow’, her headteacher has revealed.
Leah Harrison’s headteacher fought back tears as she recalled the desperate efforts to save a 10-year-old girl after she was swept away. She read from her own statement to police after the accident at an inquest today. “I could see the flow of mud quickly rolling down from the right hand side,” said Mount Pleasant Primary School headteacher Joanne Blackham at the inquest. “It was like a lava flow, but it was more solid, black, and it took a pupil with it…I could see the child sticking out from the mud.
“The child’s legs were taken away and I could see her body submerged in the mud head down.” She joined the attempts to try to pull Leah out of the mud but ‘her legs were covered and there was no movement’.
A 999 was made while a group member involved in the attempts to reach Leah was ‘chest deep’ in the mud. She added: “There had been no issues before this…..we could not comprehend what had happened. It was hard to process.”
It was only when emergency services arrived that she was able to see that it was Leah. There had been no concerns about the rain before they headed out for the day, she added. She described Mount Pleasant as a ‘brilliant’ school with 270 children.
It had started the adventure trips about 11 years ago; the children ‘absolutely loved’. Mrs Blackham was behind Leah in a line of pupils when the mudslide ‘came out of nowhere’ while Leah was on a stepping stone in the water.
She said: “I was standing with three of the children. It literally just came out of nowhere. You could not hear it, you could not see it and it was not until it got right up close that you heard the roar and the whooshing of the water and the mud and it just swept her away. It just took her away. It was as quick as that.”
The assistant coroner for Teesside Paul Appleton asked if Leah was crossing the stream at the time and she replied: “Yes, that’s right.” There had been ‘no issues’ crossing earlier, which she described as a ‘brook’, entering the forest, and they were on the way back.
“Leah was on a stepping stone and I was at the back of the group as it came down the hill,” Mrs Blackham said. Leah’s mum, Michelle Harrison, told the inquest how ‘football-mad’ Leah had skipped to school with her ‘little suitcase’ on the day before her tragic death.
She had been poorly with tonsilitis in the days before she was due to leave for the trip and Michelle considered keeping her at home, but she recovered and was ‘so excited’ to go.
“She was like my right arm and never left my side,” Michelle said in a statement read to the inquest at Teesside magistrates court in Middlesbrough. “She really wanted to go, she did not want to miss out. I walked with her to school and Leah had her little suitcase, she was proud as punch. She was not going to cry when she left and she did not want me to either. I gave her the biggest kiss and cuddle and told her to have the best time.”
“May 22 was the worst day of my life,” her mum went on. “I knew they were starting activities and that was the last I heard until the police officers arrived at my door to tell me the worst possible news that my daughter had passed away.”
She told how Leah loved football and inspired by England’s Lionesses, wanted to be a footballer when she grew up. In a statement released shortly after the keen footballer’s death, Leah’s family said: “Leah Harrison, the happy, bubbly, go-lucky little girl. The beautiful smile, the giddy laugh, the silly jokes. You will never, ever be forgotten, baby girl. You will achieve your dream and become a player for the Lionesses. Spread those wings. May you rest in paradise.”
The jury found that Leah’s death was by traumatic asphyxiation after being submerged in ‘thick mud’. They concluded that it was an accident.
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