POLICE in the Dominican Republic are believed to have tracked down two teenage lovers who escaped from a Catholic boarding school in Lancashire in the middle of the night to fly to the Caribbean.
Edward Bunyan and Indira Gainiyeva, both 16, ordered a taxi at 3am on Monday morning from Stonyhurst College in Clitheroe to Manchester airport and caught a flight to the Dominican Republic.
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Matthew Mostyn, second master at the £30,000-a-year college, said that there would be a full review of the school's procedures, but that the main priority was to reunite the pupils with their families. Mostyn said any decisions on punishment for the missing students were "conversations for another day".
Stonyhurst College, a day and boarding school, describes itself as one of Britain's leading Catholic boarding schools and received an outstanding inspection report in April 2010 from Ofsted.
Mostyn told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We have excellent security, although it needs to be remembered that the prime purpose of that security is to keep intruders out of the building rather than to somehow try to imprison our students."
However, one friend told The Times it was an "incredible stunt" and likened the college's security to "Alcatraz", with patrolling security guards and doors locked by 11pm.
Another source told the Daily Mail: "It can be pretty miserable at a bleak 15th century Jesuit school in the middle of winter and close friends say they had a bad case of the post-holiday blues."
Victoria Bunyan, the widow of Edward Bunyan's older half-brother Christopher, told the Daily Telegraph: "I don't approve at all but it sounds like he is having quite an adventure."
She added: "It is going to get him in rather a lot of trouble, I am sure."