The tragedy of the Russian school accident when five schoolgirls were killed in a stairwell collapse deepened Thursday when it became known that their teacher committed suicide, reported dpa.
Russian police were cited by the Interfax agency as saying that the teacher, 43 and herself the mother of two children, hanged herself.
The director of the school, located in the Orenburg district, 1,500 kilometres south-east of Moscow, had described how the teacher was "completely devastated" by Wednesday's stairwell collapse.
Besides the five schoolgirls in the 11th grade, six other youngsters were injured in the accident.
It was suspected that the accident was the result of poor construction. Repair work on one of the supporting walls within the school, built in 1964, reportedly had been in progress in days before the accident.