TWO men from Bolton may not be allowed to leave Tenerife for two to three years pending the investigation into the death of Michael William Hulse, also from Bolton.

The pair, Jimmy Brandwood and Richard Paul Fletcher, were arrested in Playa de Americas on April 13.

No other details of the two men or their addresses in Bolton have been revealed.

As previously reported in the Bolton Evening News, the arrests were made after Mr Hulse was taken unconscious to the island's main hospital, where he later died.

A police spokesman on Tenerife said Mr Hulse, aged 38, was on holiday on the island with a friend, Raymond Small, also from Bolton. Mr Hulse, who lived with his father in Solent Drive, Darcy Lever, and was known to family and friends as Joe, was taken unconscious to Tenerife's Canderlaria hospital, and was thought to be making steady progress.

But on April 29 he suffered a sudden relapse and died.

Mr Hulse, who was single, had been able to speak to his mother on one of her two visits to Tenerife to be at his bedside.

She returned home, confident he would soon be back in Bolton, when the family received a phone call with the heartbreaking news of Joe's death. The two men, whose passports are being held, will have to report to the police once every fortnight until the trial.

But the British Consulate said that could still be two to three years away.

"Where no-one is being held in actual custody, cases can take that long to go to trial," a spokesman explained.

Tenerife's English newspaper Island Connections reported that the judge had requested an autopsy and Mr Hulse's body could not be flown back to Bolton until that was completed.

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