Teacher denies forcing schoolgirl to carry on with hike before she drowned

A teacher today denied forcing a schoolgirl to carry on hiking across Dartmoor before she drowned in a swollen river. Chris Fuller said 14-year-old Charlotte Shaw wanted to walk even further across the waterlogged moor because "she wanted to prove herself". Fuller, 30, was the leader of a party of students from private Edgehill College in north Devon that was training for the annual army-run Ten Tors challenge. Students have told the inquest in Exeter that they had tearfully begged Fuller to let them leave the moor but he insisted they carry on. Fuller told how when he left the group to escort a girl off the moor they were in good spirits. "It was raining but it was what I considered to be typical Dartmoor conditions," Fuller said. "The group were generally delighted to have achieved what they had." He said the "dangers and difficulties" of crossing swollen streams and rivers had been explained to them. "We had talked to the whole group about not jumping over rivers, even if it meant having to go round a longer route. When we left them the children were in good spirits. They were proud and told me they wanted to prove what they were capable of. "They just wanted to get going again. If any of them had wanted to come off the moor that was fine. This was a selection event. "There was no point in keeping pupils on the moor who didn't want to be there. If they had wanted to come off we would have taken them off. "These were pupils I knew very, very well and who could come to me as a trusted individual to air any concerns. "They were impatient. They wanted to get moving. They wanted to get home to get their French homework done. They all knew that walking in the rain is one of the basic elements of Dartmoor. "The previous night we had changed the route slightly to take out one tor and Charlotte Shaw criticised me for shortening it. She asked how she was going to prove herself if I did things like that." The inquest continues.