A teenage boy has been arrested after he stabbed a 15-year-old schoolgirl to death on their way to school this morning, Sept. 27.

The girl, a pupil at Old Palace of John Whitgift School in Croydon, has been named locally as Eliyanna. She was attacked at 8.30am while the bus was less than a mile away from the school gates.

Locals say they saw a group of schoolchildren getting off the bus outside the Whitgift Centre, where a fight between the girl, wearing a green school blazer, and the boy, in a black blazer, “spilled out” on to a street busy with pedestrians.

It was previously claimed that the girl had been attacked after she “refused to go out” with the boy and “rejected his offers of flowers”, but it has now been claimed he was in fact trying to speak with her friend.

The friend had been trying to hand the boy back a bag of his belongings while he tried to give her flowers when the fight broke out.

A love note with the words “special girl” and “princess” written on it, along with blood stained red roses, were being examined by forensic officers.

Chevanice Thomas, whose friend claims to have witnessed the stabbing, said the girl had rejected flowers from the boy moments before he attacked her with a knife that resembled “a sword”, DailyMail reports. Another witness claimed she heard a girl saying she “didn’t want to go out with him any more”.

The bus driver and a passenger tried desperately to save the girl’s life but she died at the scene at 9.21am.

Community worker James Watkins said the girl’s family were summoned to the scene this morning but were “unable to make it” in time to say goodbye to their daughter.

Officers arrested a 17-year-old boy in nearby New Addington at 9.45am.

Old Palace of John Whitgift School is a selective independent day school for girls aged three to 18. It is consistently ranked as one the best in London and is a sister school to Whitgift School for Boys. It is not yet clear which school the boy attended.