Koji Terao, the Hokuetsu High School teacher in charge of supervising the school's soft tennis team, speaks at a news conference in Niigata on Sunday. | JIJI

NIIGATA – A private high school in Niigata Prefecture, one of whose students was killed in a microbus crash last week, said Sunday it had requested buses through Kanbara Tetsudo, a local bus operator, multiple times in the past.

The microbus carrying 20 students of the soft tennis club of Hokuetsu High School in the city of Niigata crashed into a guardrail on the Ban-Etsu Expressway in the city of Koriyama, Fukushima Prefecture, on Wednesday, leaving 17-year-old Hiroto Inagaki dead and many other students injured.

The microbus was rented from a car rental shop through Kanbara Tetsudo and driven by a man who does not have a commercial driving license.

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