Appeal to get drowned After Death band-mates home

Leon Villalba was the "driving force" behind the band

A campaign has begun to raise funds to help bring home the bodies of two members of the band After Death who drowned in Brazil.

Timothy Kennelly, 18, died trying to save band-mate Leon Villalba, 21, whose body washed up on a beach last week.

Neither of the men, both from London, had travel insurance so the families are facing a £10,000 bill to fly their bodies home.

The band's label, Death Toll Records, has set up a webpage for donations.

The body of Mr Villalba, from Islington, north London, washed up on shore in Aracaju on 21 January, and Mr Kennelly, who was due to study Physics at York University, was found by coastguards 15 miles from the resort the following day.

All we want now is to give him a good send-off Timothy Kennelly's father Diarmuid

Mr Kennelly, a bassist, had only joined the band six months earlier, after sitting his A-Levels.

His father Diarmuid Kennelly, from Ealing, west London, said the band went swimming on a day off from the tour when the tragedy happened.

"He was full of wit and jokes," he said of his son.

"All we want now is to give him a good send-off, but trying to get him home is a bit of a nightmare for us now."

After Death's record producer, Graham Hilling, said profits from the band's album, Eulogy, would go to the online appeal to raise money to fly the bodies home.

He said: "Try to put yourself in the same position, if your child died abroad and you could not bury them."