THE HEARTBROKEN family of the mum and toddler electrocuted while they bathed have pleaded for help in raising cash to return the bodies to their native Romania.

Liliana Arsene, 37, and Filip Arsene, three, were killed when an electric heater – installed just a day earlier by dad Vascilia, 37 – fell in the water at their home in Tennyson Road, Harold Hill.

Now, a week after the tragic deaths last Thursday evening (January 13), the family are desperately trying to raise �1,200 to fly the bodies to Romania for burial.

“We need help from the people of Havering and London. Words cannot describe our pain,” devastated Vascilia told the Recorder via an interpreter,

“I want to go back to Romania as soon as possible and I want to be able to visit the graves of my wife and boy.”

Vascilia wants to bury his youngest son and wife of 20 years in a family plot in the couple’s hometown of Caralasi, in south-east of Romania.

“I want to take them home,” Vascilia said. “Both sets of parents are buried there and I want them to be together.”

The family have already raised �1,700 from family and friends living in Havering and back home, but they fall short of the �2,900 needed. This is a cost price service offered by Havering undertakers West & Coe to help the family.

The family also approached the Romanian embassy in London, but staff were unable to help.

The bodies are due to be released by the coroner’s office at the end of next week, Vascilla said, but the deaths are being treated by police as a tragic accident.

The family, including daughter Lidia, 14, and surviving son Marco, seven, arrived in the UK from Spain just two months before the tragedy.

Now the remaining three will return for good to Romania.

“There’s nothing left for us here,” said a choked-up Vascilia. “It still feels the same as the day it happened. I am broken, I have no words left.”

The family are staying with friends in Masefield Crescent, Harold Hill

At 8.30pm on the day of the tragedy, Vascilia broke down the door of his bathroom to find Liliana and Filip in cardiac arrest.

The pair had been bathing together and it is thought the portable heater, which had been placed on a nearby shelf, had been accidentally kicked into the water.

Little Filip was pronounced dead at the scene. Paramedics from the London Ambulance Service managed to revive Liliana but she died in the early hours of the following morning at Queen’s Hospital, Romford.

To help, call 07404 477 594.