I’ve just read an email that I got just over a year ago and have not read since. When I first read it I refused to believe its contents until I spoke to the author. I thought it was some joke and that he’d joined the chat room and shout “Boo!”. The email is about Leo, a friend I made online and is written by his sister.

I met Leo online in a Livestream channel via his sister whom I’ve talked to for a while. The Livestream is about a comic page being drawn and we can chat to each other and the person drawing the page. I’ve known Leo for a few months and got on well together, we sort of became the channel couple. Every week we’d talk and learn something new about each other. Leo is Australian and the Livestream and I are English, so we only spoke for a hour or two each stream because it was very early in the morning for him and he had school.

The email from his sister was informing me of Leo’s death. He was hit by a drunk driver on the way home from work and left at the side of the road. He died 20 minutes after arriving in hospital. I miss Leo and become tearful whenever I think about him; sometimes I cry. I have a few chat logs that I neither read nor delete with him in. It has been almost a year since his death and I don’t know what to say. He will not be forgotten.

Andy Scarlett (AKA Leo / LeBroFist)
17 October 1994 - 19 October 2012