A 'happy and bright' teenager collapsed in the shower and died while on holiday. Nineteen-year-old Rhea Hourigan had been visiting her aunt in Paris last month when she suffered a mystery cardiac arrest.
The first-year Durham University Student had spent a 'brilliant' day travelling through the French capital on an electric bike but later in the evening when getting ready for bed Rhea collapsed just after saying she was fine.
Paramedics who rushed to the scene but she was pronounced dead at 12.45am. Polly Townhill, best friend of Rhea's mother, told the Mirror: " She'd got in the shower and she was getting ready to go to bed.
"She'd been there for quite a long time, so her Auntie knocked to say 'Is everything all right you coming out?' She answered her, Rhea said: 'Yeah, yeah, I'm on my way out.' Then she heard a bang..."
The cause of the cardiac arrest remains a mystery with no known history of heart failure in the family or pre-existing medical conditions. In another blow for the family, they have been unable to see their daughter due to the autopsy taking place next week.
Polly said: "She had full travel insurance but it hasn't covered what they need. There's so much red tape over there and they have to treat her death as mitigating circumstances. It would still be a tragedy without this, but her parents cannot see their child until the autopsy is done. They are desperate to bring her home.
"Those are the two main things I know and it means that they haven't been able to have an autopsy. Jo [mother] has just faced brick wall after brick wall."
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The family of the girl described her as 'their bright shining star', adding that she was well-loved and had plans for the future. Writing on Facebook, her mother Jo said: "She had so many plans, dreams and aspirations she was our bright shining star. She hadn’t even finished her first year of uni which she absolutely loved up in Durham and had made so many good friends.
"Our only comfort is that she was so happy and had had such a brilliant day seeing the sights of Paris, she wouldn’t have known what had happened and didn’t suffer."
Polly says she and Jo were pregnant together and have been friends for 30 years. She said: "We're all girlfriends, all the mums and we've all got children all the same age. One of our friend's daughters is the general manager of Nandos and all of the girls work there. So many people in such a small community are beyond devastated," she says.
Family friend Dawn Buchanan has set up a GoFundMe to help support the family and the financial pressures.
She wrote: "Their friends and family wanted to reach out and help as much as they can to ease the financial burden a little with any costs they will be incurring during this devasting time and the coming weeks and months."
