‘Rob never caused any trouble – and he wasn’t into taking drugs’
Friend of the West Brom fan relives how birthday celebrations turned to tragedy, writes Matt Law
It was meant to be a 30th birthday celebration, friends enjoying a trip to Sofia to take in England’s Euro 2020 qualifier against Bulgaria. Instead, the party turned to tragedy when Rob Spray, one of the group of 11, was found dead in mysterious circumstances in police custody.
No one has been able to obtain many answers since.
A childhood primary school friend, Andrew Mcmath, whose landmark birthday it was, realised Spray had left their accommodation early on Monday morning. The group thought little of it, and assumed he was buying a burger or cigarettes. They tracked him on his phone. But then the West Brom season ticket-holder’s signal dropped out. The next call they took was from the 32-yearold’s sister, back at home, to be told he was dead. It was his first trip abroad to watch England.
The Bulgarian authorities say Spray was found in a helpless condition in the centre of Sofia and was taken to hospital, where he began to behave aggressively. Police were called, and he died in transit. The suggestion was Spray had taken drugs.
Mcmath, a plasterer, said his friend would have been terrified to find himself in an overseas hospital in the hours before his death. He is convinced Spray, an HGV driver regularly subject to random tests, had not taken drugs.
“Rob wasn’t taking any drugs. There were no drugs. The whole trip, I’ve not seen him try to get hold of or use any drugs. It just feels like an easy thing to say.”
While Mcmath is an England Supporters Travel Club member who regularly goes abroad to watch the team, he revealed how Spray was scared to go to Russia for last summer’s World Cup.
“Rob thought I was crazy for going to Russia on my own, but I loved it and there wasn’t any trouble. I told him that it was fine to go abroad with England, but I didn’t know this was going to happen.
“This was his first proper England trip. He went to Lithuania, but he booked the wrong flights and had to come back before the game. He was scared to come to Russia and he would have been scared to death that he woke up in a foreign hospital. He wouldn’t have wanted to be there.
“He has never caused any trouble. He’s the first person you want to come on holiday because he makes you laugh and he’s just great to be around.”
Mcmath and his group of friends were advised to leave Bulgaria after learning of Spray’s death and he outlined the hours before and after finding out about the tragic news. “We had been out on the Sunday night and went back to our accommodation at about 3am on Monday morning.
“Rob got up in the morning and he went towards Mcdonald’s, so he either went to get something to eat or to get cigarettes. Everyone else was in bed. He did smoke a lot and the first thing he usually did in the morning was have a fag, so if he had no cigarettes then he would have gone out to get some.
“One of the group got him on the ‘find my friends’ app and we didn’t think anything of it because you wouldn’t think he’s never going to come back.
“Then he suddenly dropped off ‘find my friends’ so we thought his battery must have died or something. We couldn’t get in touch with him, but we thought he might have bumped into some West Brom fans or just gone for a wander. We’ve been on holidays with him before and he would go and do his own thing.
“We tried to call him and he wasn’t answering and then we saw something on Twitter about a 32-year-old being in hospital. That’s when we first called the fan embassy to try to get some details. Because I’m not family, they wouldn’t give me his name or any details. Then, unfortunately, the next call I took was telling me he had died. We were distraught and then we were on the phone to the fan embassy, who told us to get our stuff and get out of the city. We said ‘shall we go and speak to the police?’ but the advice we got was not to and to get home and speak to the English police.
“A couple of the lads went and met some people who said that we should get home as quickly as possible.
“We didn’t go to the game, we went to a hotel near the airport because we were all shook up. I packed Rob’s bag, all the stuff he had left and we made our way to the airport hotel. We had to leave at 2am on Tuesday morning to get to the airport for our flight, which was then delayed for 13 hours. So we got home late Tuesday night.
“I don’t know if I will travel with England again. The weird thing is that on the Sunday afternoon we had all been making plans to go to Kosovo, but I won’t go on that trip now.”
‘We asked about talking to the police – but were told to get home quickly’