These are the first photographs to emerge of some of the children killed in the devastating Swiss tunnel bus crash - as it was revealed the driver could have been helping a teacher to change a DVD moments before the accident.
Young survivors of the horrific smash told their parents the driver was seen trying to insert the disc as they drove along the A9 motorway in Switzerland. The fear is that the driver – one of two who died – was distracted and lost control.
Renato Kalbermatten, spokesman for the Swiss police, confirmed the theory was being examined, although CCTV footage ‘did not make the situation very clear'.
Portraits of the smiling Stekske school children were placed on display at Lommel Town Hall as hundreds of Belgians arrived to pay tribute to the 22 youngsters and six adults who lost their lives.
A distraught mother of one of the teachers killed said she 'could not believe' her daughter 'is gone'. Fern Vanheukelom was on board the coach that smashed into the wall of an underpass with her 11-year-old nephew Sam Geboers - who miraculously survived.
Her mother said: 'I can not believe Fern is gone. When we heard the news the morning of the accident with the Stekske School bus I immediately thought of Fern. This is terrible, she was so young.'
Today it was also revealed one girl and two boys remain in a coma at the University Hospital in Lausanne after suffering severe brain and chest injuries. Relatives also visited the crash site in the tunnel today to leave flowers in tribute to their loved ones.
A child taken to Bern Hospital was said to now be 'out of danger', while 14 children at Sion Hospital are doing 'relatively well' - despite suffering leg, rib, spine and skull fractures. Some are even expected to return to Belgium later today or tomorrow.
Earlier today investigators said the driver could have had a heart attack at the wheel. The theory was just one of three others being looked at as the cause of the horrific smash which saw the front of the vehicle, containing 52 people returning home to Belgium from a Swiss skiing holiday, all but disintegrate.
Human error or a technical problem with the coach were the other two possibilities, but they have now been discounted.
It came as a criminal prosecutor discounted police theories the bus, which ploughed into an underpass wall, had been speeding. Twenty eight others were seriously injured, with two other children fighting for their lives after been airlifted to nearby hospitals.
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