Ten years ago, 26-year-old Kevin Bell’s funeral took place in Newry, where he grew up, after he was killed in a hit-and-run incident in New York.
“He’d been out on a Saturday night and was returning to his apartment. A speeding van hit him on to the road, where he was hit by another vehicle. They went on without stopping and Kevin was killed,” said his father, Colin Bell.
It was a “terrible shock” to his family and friends, and the town “went into a frenzy of fundraising to bring Kevin home,” he said.
It prompted the foundation of the Kevin Bell Repatriation Trust. The charity aims to alleviate the financial hardship of bereaved families by helping to repatriate to Ireland the bodies of loved ones who have died abroad.
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“Kevin was a very popular man, he’d only been in New York 10 months but was very well known at home through sport and drama”.
Before his time in New York, Kevin had spent a year in Australia and had visited Thailand. His “great love” was travel.
He was “hugely popular” at home, survived by his father Colin and mother Eithne, and siblings Brendan, Sean, Ciara, Eamon, Conor and Maeve, as well as his extended family and many friends.
“In the space of a week, there was £150,000 raised to bring Kevin home,” Colin recalls.
“It obviously didn’t take that much to bring him home and then we had this money that wasn’t really ours left. A week after Kevin’s funeral, we heard a young fellow from Belfast died in Thailand and we reached out to his family to offer to bring him home,” Mr Bell said.
“Then a young fellow from Sligo was killed in Las Vegas and we did the same, and it kept going. At that stage we decided we would make this Kevin’s legacy and we applied to the charity status in Northern Ireland to become registered”.
In the 10 years since Kevin’s death, the charity has brought home more than 1,620 loved ones to Ireland who died abroad, from countries including Australia, Argentina, South Korea, the United States, Canada, Ecuador, Cambodia, India and Uganda.
The trust repatriates about 15 to 20 people back to Ireland per month.
Last year was its busiest since the charity was established, with 255 repatriations, compared with 183 in 2021, 182 in 2020 and 207 in both 2019 and 2018.
“At this stage now there’s hardly a country we haven’t taken someone home from, and we’ve touched most parishes in Ireland now. The main aim is to take away the financial difficulty for bereaved families. Once you get news like that, you’re left thinking who to talk to and how to handle things. But if a family contacts us, we can take everything out of their hands to arrange and pay for it,” Mr Bell said.
While the cost can be a major barrier for most families who have to repatriate a loved one’s body from abroad – costs per repatriation can cost up to £12,000 (€14,000) depending on the circumstances of the death, local charges and hospital release costs – there is also a lot of “red tape”.
Karen Henderson, whose brother Garvan Henderson died in Portugal last September, said it was “a long and traumatic process” dealing with the Portuguese authorities to have her brother repatriated to Derry.
Garvan, who worked as a barman at a popular pub in Derry, had “been on a boys’ holiday to celebrate his birthday” in Portugal when he died, his sister told The Irish Times.
“We know now that he died from a massive stroke but it took almost eight months for the postmortem from Portugal to get to us. That was traumatic because he was repatriated to us but we didn’t know what had happened to him,” she said.
The family would have gone to the trust, but Garvan had travel insurance which covered the cost and arrangement of the repatriation.
“We know the trust would have got him home had there been any issues, but thankfully he had insurance. I sent the details to his friends and they were able to present it to the Portuguese authorities there,” Ms Henderson said.
But it was still a “lengthy” and at times confusing process, which “no family can be prepared for”, she said.
Garvan Henderson died on September 4th, and “wasn’t brought home for almost 10 days”.
“Portuguese authorities didn’t even embalm him. We didn’t see him, it was closed coffin, which added even more trauma for us. We got nowhere with the Portuguese authorities, it was a lot of red tape. Who knows, had it been another country it might’ve been a bit faster,” Ms Henderson said.
It was “a long 10 days of just feeling horrific” for all of Garvan’s family and friends.
“Garvan had a lot of friends, and people were coming down to the house all the time. There was a whole lot of tributes all week. We gathered to celebrate his birthday and let off balloons, but all that time he wasn’t even back in the country. It was hard going.”
No family can prepare or know what to expect when a loved one dies abroad, she said, but she advised “for the comfort of their loved ones knowing that if anything happened, they’d be brought home and it wouldn’t cost them thousands of pounds,” that every person get travel insurance when booking a trip.
“It cost £8 to insure Garvan. But it would’ve cost us thousands to bring him home without insurance. It’s not a nice thing for any family to go through, but we’ve done fundraisers for Kevin Bell because we know how beneficial the charity is in these situations,” she adds.
“All you want is your loved one home. Nobody wants to think about a loved one dying abroad, it’s your worst nightmare, but if it does happen, having the trust there to sort it out, or an insurance company, is half the battle”.
The trust is run by Colin Bell and just one paid staff member on the desk. A team of volunteers helps out.
All the charity requires is the name of the person who died, where the body is and the name of the undertaker at home.
“We take it from there. It more or less started by accident, but it’s something we’re very proud of. We’re proud of Kevin, the fact that his name is mentioned every day, and this is his legacy,” Mr Bell said.
