Viola Beach Band Members Die In Freak Car Accident In Sweden

All fours member of U.K. indie rock band Viola Beach and their manager have died in a car accident in Sweden.

Viola Beach Fatal Crash

Viola Beach band members Kris Leonard, River Reeves, Tomas Lowe and Jack Dakin, as well as Craig Tarry, the band’s manager died in the early hours of Saturday morning. The young men were killed when their rental car flew off of a highway bridge and more than 80 feet into a canal.

“We can confirm that five British nationals died in a car accident in Sweden on February 13,” the Foreign Office told the BBC. “We are in contact with local authorities and supporting the families at this very difficult time.”

The bridge had been opened to allow a boat to pass beneath. Barriers and flashing lights had warned motorists to stop. The car carrying Viola Beach, for unknown reasons, bypassed those warning signs.

Inspector Martin Bergholm explained, “For some reason, the car drove through the barriers and crashed down into the canal. The witnesses just saw a car beside them and kind of disappear.”

While the driver of the vehicle has yet to be identified, it has been considered possible that whoever was behind the wheel was under the influence.

“It is not impossible that the driver was under the influence of something when you see the sequence of events at the bridge,” Bergholm told the Daily Mail. “We will of course take blood samples and check if the driver was under the influence of something, but we don´t know anything about that yet.”

Viola Beach, which played at Swedish music festival Where is the Music? Friday night and was due to play a gig in Surrey the following day, was an up-and-coming group that got its start in Warrington. The four-man band had dropped its first single – “Swings and Waterslides” – just last summer, and showed promise of a long and prolific career.

“They were a great band,” fellow musician John Olsson, who also played at the Where is the Music fest, told the BBC. “I was standing in the audience thinking I will be able to say I hung around with Viola Beach before they made it big.”