It did not add up. Missing for more than 30 hours, Australian rugby league player Liam Hampson was found to have died tragically without leaving the premises of the Barcelona nightclub where he had been partying in the early hours of Tuesday morning. His friends mounted a desperate search to try and locate him, but it was not until many hours later that his body was found, after he had fallen nearly 10 metres into a building cavity behind Sala Apolo, one of Barcelona's best known nightlife venues. The security cameras of the venue have resolved most of the incognitos surrounding the death of Hampson, described as a rising star for Queensland rugby league club the Redcliffe Dolphins. As explained by the manager of the Apolo, Albert Guijarro, the club's security cameras recorded the entire route that the man took, around half past four in the morning of Tuesday 18th, after his friends, with whom he had come to Barcelona on a European holiday, had lost sight of him.
As Guijarro explained to the radio station RAC1, the video footage, which has now been turned over to the Mossos d'Esquadra police, shows how the 24-year-old man left from the main space of the Apolo through one of the emergency doors, although one of his three friends had tried to stop him. He then went through another door and out onto a terrace, the CCTV footage showed. He stopped to urinate, and then couldn't get back in because the doors were closed.
He saw that there was a 1.5 metre wall and jumped over it, but then fell ten metres into a space on the other side, along which service conduits pass. According to Guijarro, it is "well lit for the whole length", but Liam Hampson "jumped to a spot which was not even in the middle of his route, it is not very well understood why he did this".
Attempting to sum up the nightclub manager's account, the RAC1 radio host said: “So perhaps he lost his way when he was looking for the toilet, and then he found himself on that terrace, couldn’t open the emergency doors once he’d come out, and ended up jumping - illogically because he did it without looking - but he ended up jumping?”
"Yes," said Apolo manager Albert Guijarro.
Ringing cellphone alerted nightclub staff
The Sala Apolo manager explained that at noon on Wednesday 19th, Liam's body was discovered when a cell phone rang. His friends were trying to call him. It was then that his body was spotted, at the bottom of the service cavity. The Mossos police took charge of the investigations and confirmed, after viewing the CCTV images, that the man had gone to an outside area and had jumped into the void, towards the ducts.
The police confirmed on Wednesday evening that the death of the young Australian, on holiday in Barcelona, is being investigated as an accidental fall and they did not detect any signs of criminal intent on his body, while the video recordings also validated this. The death of the rugby league player while on holiday in Europe has shocked Australia.