Runaway teens may face police investigation in Caribbean

TWO teenagers who eloped to the Dominican Republic from their British boarding school are facing a police investigation in the Caribbean country.

The general feeling was that Edward Bunyan, 16, and Indira Gainiyeva, 17, would receive little more than a dressing down from teachers and parents when they returned to the UK. But the Daily Telegraph reports the pair were "questioned by police for more than three hours" yesterday.

The paper says a "file on the case" will be passed to the chief prosecutor in the resort town of Punta Cana. He will decide if the young couple have broken any laws. The Telegraph understands that Bunyan and Gainiyeva have been told to remain in the Dominican Republic until a decision has been made.

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Until then, the pair are holed up at the Occidental Grand Hotel with Edward's uncle and his mother, Susannah, who is said to be "angry but relieved".

Police in the Dominican Republic spent days searching resorts, beaches and bars for the runaways before they were located at a beach cafe. They told friends they were running away from Stonyhurst College in Lancashire because they were sick of the British weather.

Writing in the London Evening Standard, Sarah Sands says it's hard to see any "obvious victims" of the escapade other than "anxious parents".

Sands adds: "The young couple were compared by schoolmates to Bonnie and Clyde, the American outlaws, and to Romeo and Juliet, but it was always going to be a happier ending.

"What the mini-saga shows is the changing face of the UK's private education system. It is a long time since Jennings and Darbishire [the fictional prep school heroes from the childrens' books first published in 1950] ran away to the village shop and were gravely punished."