The third student who perished in the water at Daboase in the Western Region has had their corpse recovered.
In the early hours of yesterday, it was found.
The three were among seven Daboase Senior High Technical School students who went to the flooded River Subri over the weekend to wash their clothing and go swimming.
According to reports, the boarders' housemaster and school administration were unaware that the pupils had left the hostel.
Three of them, all first-year technical students, perished as a result of their activity, which had a tragic ending.
Lesley Nana Yaw Bimpon, 19, Christian Dennison Acquah, 18, and Richard Baidoo, also 19, were the three pupils that passed away.
Two of the victims had already been found, but it took three days of futile searching before the third body was found in the river.
This came after a libation ceremony that the traditional chiefs had done to aid in the recovery.
a swimming contest
The remains of the three were at the mortuary, and their relatives had been called, according to District Chief Executive Emmanuel Boakye, who spoke to the Daily Graphic.
He said that the fatality resulted from the pupils competing with one another to see who was the finest diver and could do acrobatics in the river.
The victims admitted to being from coastal areas and swimming in the ocean—not a little river compared to the sea—during questioning, which revealed this.
According to the school, the children went to a competition two weeks ago and were disciplined and ordered not to go near the river again.
However, these seven children snuck out to compete among themselves once more, the teacher added.
a security issue
The Daily Graphic saw a sombre atmosphere among staff and pupils as they went about their daily routines during a visit to the school yesterday.
According to a teacher who requested anonymity, the headmaster told all the kids not to approach the river last Friday since the rain had caused it to overrun its banks and was thus unsafe for swimming.
The reason for this, according to the school administration, was that some of the boys were organising swimming contests in the river. Since this was not permitted by the school, the boys had to face consequences.
"On Saturday morning after breakfast, I was with them and advised them to return to their dorm rooms and finish their studies due to the intense downpour.
But these lads snuck out; I don't know what happened," she stated in tears.
She attributed the circumstances that encouraged pupils to slip out of the school to the size of the unwalled school property and the placement of the school buildings, which made it challenging to implement stringent surveillance.
She lamented that because of the dispersed location of the school buildings within the wide, unwalled school site, pupils could easily slip away from the instructors, the majority of whom did not actually reside on the campus.
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