Gold Coast star AJ Brimson has revealed further heartbreaking details surrounding the death of his close friend Liam Hampson last month.
The Queensland rugby league player had not been seen for 30 hours after disappearing while partying with a group of NRL players, including Brimson and Broncos star Jodan Riki, in Barcelona three weeks ago.
Chilling CCTV footage captured the final moments of Hampson’s life after he appeared to get lost, having walked through a security exit. Spanish police have said he fell 10m to his death after scaling a 1.5m wall.
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Horrified club staff found Hampson’s lifeless body at the bottom of a hole in an outside area.
Hampson’s body has been released to his family. His funeral service will be held at Dolphins Stadium in Redcliffe on Monday.
Speaking ahead of the traumatic occasion, Brimson has told The Courier-Mail of the most “heartbreaking” aspect he is still coming to terms with.
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“There’s been so many times already where I’ve gone to message him … that’s been the most heartbreaking thing,” Brimson said.
“We can never do those things together or share them anymore. He was determined with his footy but also a happy guy. He was never stressed.
“We lived together for four years and bickered and sooked like brothers, but when he moved out I kept asking him every weekend to move back in. He was such a good mate.
“I’m going to miss him like crazy. We’ve got a tight bunch of boys and he was one of my best mates. I’m going to miss him a lot.”
Brimson has also revealed gut-wrenching details about the group of rugby league players’ desperate search for Hampson in Barcelona after the 24-year-old did not return from their late-night at the Apolo nightclub.
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Brimson said it was not in Hampson’s nature to fail to check in with his mates if he did not return to the hotel they were all staying at together.
He said he first suspected Hampson had left the club with a girl, but soon had fears for his friend’s wellbeing when he did not check in with the group later that day.
Brimson said he feared Hampson could have been murdered.
“That’s when we started going to police stations and embassies and from then on it was non-stop until we found out what happened,” he said.
“I knew what he was like and he wasn’t the type of guy that wouldn’t message us, but it was hard to get that across to the police. It was frustrating.
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“We were trying to tell the police something was wrong and they were saying, ‘We see this all the time, people go missing but they’re just with a girl or something’.
“I knew that wasn’t Liam at all. We knew something was very wrong by Tuesday night.
“At worst he would have messaged us. If he got mugged he would have found his way back. I thought he had been murdered.
“We knew it wasn’t good, but just hoped he was all right somewhere. We walked the same route home trying to find something, anything.
“We went back to the club at about 5pm to try and get footage to see who he left with and when, but they wouldn’t let us see it before the cops.
“It’s weird to think we were outside the club and he was in there, but we had no way of knowing that.”
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He said police eventually got in contact and they were sent to a police station where they were given the tragic news.
“By that stage, we knew it wasn’t good. They could have sent us wherever he was if he was OK. Then the social workers started to arrive and they told us (he was dead) through a translator. You can’t really explain it. It was just disbelief. I felt like I was going to be sick. You never think that’s going to happen.
“It made sense because he just vanished. We didn’t remember him being outside the club or anything and that’s because he never left.”
Hampson attended Keebra Park State High School on the Gold Coast with Brimson before the pair played their junior rugby league together at the Tweed Seagulls.
While Brimson moved on to the Titans, Hampson moved to the Redcliffe Dolphins in Queensland’s domestic rugby league competition where he played as a hooker.
He had played in 37 games for Redcliffe, scoring nine tries.
Brimson says he is dedicating the rest of his career to Hampson.
