A twin says he could feel his brother die after he left home and never returned.

Ricky Wellington, 33, from Romford, left his family home on January 22 to go for a walk.

After he didn’t return, his family became worried and reported him missing. Officers from the Metropolitan Police, along with local residents, launched a search.

But Ricky’s twin brother, Dean, said he had a horrible feeling that his brother had died just days after he went missing.

11 days after the start of the search for Ricky, Dean’s intuition was confirmed after a body was found on February 1.

His death has broken the hearts of not just his family, but the hundreds who knew and loved him.

At first, Ricky’s family didn’t think anything was wrong.

“He didn’t come home Friday night, so we thought he must have stayed at a friends,” Ricky’s wife, Kimberly, 35, said.

“He didn’t come home on Saturday and we got concerned so called around. It was so cold so we assumed he was in someone’s house – but by Sunday morning we realised something wasn’t right,” she said.

That Sunday morning, Dean called Kimberly to tell her he had a horrible feeling that Ricky had passed away.

“For Dean, he woke up on the Sunday morning and he rang me and he said ‘He’s gone,'” Kimberly recalled. “He said ‘I don’t feel him anymore. He’s died.’ We started looking on that day. Dean still believes he died on Sunday, but we don’t know. When he woke up, he said that the feeling of being a twin was gone. He says he is a full twin now because he is doing the work for both of them.”

In the eleven days that Ricky was gone, the family called everyone they knew and began searching for him.

“We started to feel he might be outside and that’s when we started searching places and rivers, thinking he might have fallen in,” Kimberly said.

“It was horrendous.”

They received the devastating news that his body had been found on the afternoon of February 1.

“We were relieved to find him, just not in those circumstances,” Kimberly said.

“We weren’t going to give up. I promised mum we would bring him home regardless.”

“It’s obviously devastating. His twin brother was screaming down the phone. He had got to the location just as police arrived after we had a phone call saying someone found a body.”

In 2008, Ricky was severely injured in a bike accident when he was just 20-years-old. Since the crash, Kimberly said he was never quite the same person.

“He had a bike accident and he ended up fracturing his skull,” she said. “He had brain damage more in terms of reasoning and more with chat. It meant that if he broke a glass in the bedroom he would have swept it into the hallway not thinking there would be glass left in the hallway. He had just come out of months and months in hospital and rehabilitation therapy and he came out of it not the same. He knew he was not the same as his twin brother.”

Despite the tragic impact of the crash, Ricky remained as kind and loving as ever.

“He was ever so kind and he would give you anything you wanted,” she added.

“If he had it, he would share it with you.

“He spoke to my mum every single day, even if he didn’t have anything to say. He would just say ‘I was thinking in my head how are you?’ every single day. Some days I could get 20 phone calls just to see how I was. When I was pregnant he would call and ask if it was here yet – he was so excited, he loved his niece and nephew. He was brilliant, he really was.”

The post-mortem examination into Ricky’s death has come back inconclusive, meaning the family still does not know how he passed away.

Even in the family’s darkest days, the outpouring from local residents and complete strangers has touched their hearts.

“I have even had private messages from people I don’t know who are asking how they can help,” Kimberly said.

“There were random people helping, we were overwhelmed by support.”

The family have set up a fundraiser in Ricky’s name to raise money to create a place for people to go when they are in need.

“Our dad lives in France and Ricky used to go quite often for a couple of weeks at a time,” she said.

“It’s in the middle of nowhere but he would just sit there and relax and used to help my dad. He just loved it out there.”

“He would want nothing more than to turn that into somewhere for people who need time away and be safe.

“Ricky went for a walk – we don’t know why – but he never came home. If he had somewhere safe to go, it might have been a different story. We just don’t know. He was 33, we can’t let his life have been a waste, we want to continue it somehow in a positive way. No one will be turned away, they will be safe.”

The house they have in mind would be named Ricky’s Respite, and the family hopes they could fund individuals’ trips to visit if they ever need that space away.

The money will also go to the charity Cadaver Dogs as well as towards paying the cost of Ricky’s funeral.

“We are already overwhelmed by people who have donated,” Kimberly said. “It would mean so much to us. We can’t do anything else for Ricky in his life because he is gone now but we can make sure his name lives on forever. Me and his brother, whatever life he would have lived, he will live that through us. We will complete his dreams for him.”