The two British siblings died in Sri Lanka. Photo / Supplied
The two British siblings died in Sri Lanka. Photo / Supplied
A UK family has opened up about how the Sri Lankan bombings destroyed them, in a heartbreaking interview.
A father had travelled to Sri Lanka with two of his children while their mother stayed in London with the other two. They could never expect the trip would mean this shattering loss for the family.
One of the siblings, David Linsey, opened up in an interview about the pain of losing his brother Daniel, 19, and sister Amelie, 15, who died in one of the hotel blasts in Sri Lanka.
"I was woken by screaming — chaos. My bedroom is in the basement. I went upstairs. My little brother Ethan and my mother were hysterical with grief. My brother told me what had happened. My mother couldn't speak. He said they were gone," he told the "Daily Mail".
Daniel and Amelie had been having breakfast with their father Matthew in the Shangri-La hotel in Sri Lanka, when the bomb exploded.
They were both meant to fly back to London later that day.
"I called my father," David recalls. "He was at the hospital. He'd lost his voice. He was clearly very distressed. He had marks all over his face — blood, shrapnel, but he was thinking clearly."
"He told us exactly what had happened and kept saying how sorry he was. It wasn't his fault but he felt he could have done things differently. They were only going for breakfast..."
David says he'll always remember his sister Amelie as "beautiful from the inside out". She was getting a drink for her dad at the hotel buffet bar the moment the bomb went off.
His father says he remembers "a wave of pressure" and his children running towards him.
They tried to escape, but a second blast went off.
The father, who is now back in the UK, doesn't know which bomb killed his children.
"You don't believe it, even when your father says it," says David. "You think they might be confused. They might be wrong. You hope.
"I wanted to confirm it. My 11-year-old brother and mother were in hysterics. I wanted to establish what had happened."
The mother, Angelina, is broken with grief.
"I want to speak about Danny and Amelie," she says.
"Amelie was always there for all of us. Ethan would go and talk to her about his day at school if he was worried about anything..."
"He'd sleep in her bed if he was worried," David adds.
"Dan spoke to her about what he was doing. All of us. All of us. She was always very calm and very fair. She knew inherently the right thing to do," Angelina continues.
"My children are my best friends. We do everything together," she says, overcome with grief.
The only reason the rest of the family didn't join the trip to Sri Lanka was because 11-year-old Ethan wanted to spend the Easter holiday in London. Still, the family spoke by video-call every single day.
"The idea was to take Amelie and Danny because Danny was starting university, so Matt wanted to spend that extra time with him before he started," the mum explains.
"I FaceTimed them every day. They were going to markets and doing cookery classes. They went to an elephant sanctuary. They went to a tea plantation and there was a lot of shopping because Amelie loved clothes.
"For me, the important thing was that they were fearless — that they were never afraid to do anything and took things as far as they wanted to. Danny actually texted me that morning. It must have been very early morning..."
She said she wanted to do the interview with the Daily Mail because she wanted to speak about her "beautiful children" and how proud she was of them.
The family is now setting up a foundation to help fund medical equipment for the hospital in Sri Lanka's capital, Colombo, where the children's bodies were taken to.
The family in happier times. Photo / Supplied
"My dad suggested calling it 'Love Is The Answer' after his and my sister's favourite song," David says.
"I think we should have their names on it. Call it the Amelie and Daniel Linsey Foundation, so they live on. We want to hear about them. It's very important we remember the local victims as well. We hear about the eight Britons who died but we don't even know the names of the Sri Lankans."
He says the foundation will also honour the siblings' passion for helping others.
"My father and I came up with the idea of a foundation when we were thinking about who Daniel and Amelie were as people — how much charity work they'd done.
"My brother spent some time last year helping in a village in Ethiopia. His passion is people and places. He was much more vocational than me. He worked harder than any of us, I think. He tried. Given what we were told to expect from him [he is referring to his brother's learning difficulties], he was by far the most impressive of any of us."
There is a lot Daniel and Amelie won't do but there is also a lot their memories will lead others to do - and that's what the family is holding onto for the moment, as they try to build a future without the children.
