A popular teenage girl died after walking in front of a bus while being distracted by her mobile phone, an inquest heard.
Sian Ellis, 15, was heading home from school when the red double-decker Volvo school bus struck her.
She suffered injuries to her head, chest and abdomen and died in hospital, Leicestershire Live reports.
Sian's inquest was told a young woman matching her description was seen "walking through the school grounds wearing a scarf around her head and looking down at her mobile phone" moments before the collision in Coalville, Leicestershire.
Giving evidence at Loughborough Coroner's Court, Detective Constable John Borlase, a forensic collision investigator with Leicestershire Police, said: "I spoke to all 60 children on the bus and about 20 to 30 others in the area at the time and interviewed the key witnesses.
"They all had a similar account, that Sian was walking towards the road, looking down at her mobile phone. One witness said she had headphones in her ear as well."
Assistant Coroner for the East Midlands Louise Pinder recorded the youngster died as a result of a "road traffic collision".
The hearing was told the 62-year-old bus driver, Michael John Parker, had no valid license or insurance – in fact he only had a provisional driving licence.
Mr Parker, from Coalville, appeared in court in September last year to admit driving a motor vehicle otherwise than in accordance with a licence, using a motor vehicle on a road or public place without third party insurance and using a motor vehicle in a manner likely to cause danger to passengers. He was given a four-year driving ban and fined £120.
But Mr Parker was unable to give evidence at the inquest today due to ill-health.
Instead, Det Con Borlase summarised the driver’s police interview, in which he said he had collected pupils from the King Edward VII College campus and had just turned left into Meadow Lane, heading in the direction of the town centre, when the collision happened in January last year.
"In his account, he commented that there were a lot of children on the bus, with many standing up,” said the detective.
"He had to ask some of them to go further back as they were too far forward.
"He was driving at about 20mph and had to shout to the children again to get back.
"Then he said he saw a ‘flash’ in front of him and that’s when the collision occurred.
"He hadn’t seen Sian walk into the road but said he realised when he got off the bus."
Det Con Borlase said that despite some children blocking his view of the bus doors and wing mirrors, Mr Parker’s view in front of the bus was not obscured.
PC Bird told the court that driving conditions were “fine and dry” and said an examination of the bus found no defects that would have “caused or contributed” to the collision.
He said Sian, of Whitwick, Leicestershire, collided with the front near side of the vehicle about a metre into the road.
PC Bird calculated that the bus would have been travelling at about 19mph, giving Mr Parker just 0.63 seconds to react, even if he had seen the teenager.
He said: “With the amount of time between Sian stepping off the pavement and the point of impact there was nothing Mr Parker could have done to avoid the collision.”
Alex Statham, her aunt, asked Det Con Borlase why Mr Parker had not been charged with causing death by careless driving, given that he had been driving illegally.
He replied: “The difficulty is that there was no carelessness in his driving that actually caused the collision, which I think was unavoidable.”
Professor Guy Rutty, the pathologist who carried out a post mortem examination, gave the medical cause of death as a “combination of head, chest, abdomen and pelvic injuries”.
Offering her condolences to the family, Miss Pinder reassured them that Sian would not have suffered.
A statement released by the family after the hearing read: “Today marks the end of a process that has turned our world upside down for over a year.
“We now must try and find a way of moving forward without Sian.
"Sian was a daughter, a sister, a granddaughter, a niece, a cousin, a girlfriend, a best friend, and a friend to many, and the measure of her loss is unquantifiable.
“Whilst we have to come to terms with this tragic accident, we must try to help others learn from it and to stress the dangers of the use of mobile phones and the distractions that these can cause when walking by and crossing busy roadways.
“We see this everyday and hope that, if anything good can come from this, it is that other children (and adults) will have learned not to put themselves in similar danger.”
