Body found in search for rugby player

Student, 19, vanished on night out

POLICE searching for a teenage rugby player pulled a body from a river yesterday.

Henry Burke, 19, vanished after being kicked out of a nightclub in the early hours of Friday morning.

Friends say the super-fit geography student had stepped in to stop two other clubbers fighting.

He then texted his girlfriend Emma Comley, 20, to tell her he loved her.

The body was spotted in the River Avon – the 11th death on the same stretch of water in the last seven years.

His devastated girlfriend Emma made a tearful plea to find him after he went missing in Bath, Somerset, saying: “I have never been so completely terrified and utterly desperate in my entire life.”

Speaking before the body find, she added: “I went out in Bristol and he Don’t mind walr-us, we’re just having a snooze. This herd stopped for a rest on the shores of Chukotka, Russia, before returning to the water. They went on as far as the eye can sea. went out in Bath and we were texting each other throughout the night. “By midnight he was completely trashed. He was texting me through the night and could barely type. He’s a real soppy drunk and he was saying ‘I love you so much’ and ‘I’m so happy with us’. “The last message he sent me said ‘I’m p***** not going to lie’.” Police launched a search when he failed to turn up to work as a tour guide at Bath Abbey on Friday. Firefighters found the body in the River Avon, which flows through Bath city centre, at around midday yesterday. It is thought to be at least the 11th death in the same stretch since 2009 – and around half of them have been students on nights out. An Avon and Somerset police spokesman said: “A body has been found in the search for missing Henry Burke in Bath. Although formal ID hasn’t been done, his family has been informed.”