A young and healthy mum-of-two has died after collapsing while teaching an exercise class. Katy Hancock, 32, suffered a fatal brain aneurysm - or bleed - while leading a fitness bounce class.
The primary school teacher passed away on February 1 after spending a week in hospital, having collapsed on January 25. Yesterday her grieving father paid tribute to her.
Chris Taylor, said: “She was extremely lively and active and incredibly funny. She was really witty, she took the mickey all the time and was infrequently serious about things."
A GoFundMe page has been set up to help support her children, Dylan, four, and Taylor, two, with their education as well as to fund benches in locations close to the family’s heart. Friends and family of Katy’s, including her husband Edd, have so far raised a huge £19,500 – more than four times the original goal of £5,000.
Katy was described as a devoted mum who involved her two sons in her active lifestyle, taking them cycling and canoeing with her.
Chris added: “I want to put a message out there to thank everyone who’s made a donation – we're overwhelmed by that and massively grateful.
“Katy was a light in terms of her personality, she was always having last word and was generally quite forthright on things. She used to enjoy herself a lot and then when she settled down, she became the most natural mum to her two kids.
“I was kind of surprised [when she became a primary school teacher], but she had a great talent for it, her headmaster rated her incredibly highly as a professional teacher. The impact on her school, her class and the kids generally has been massive - they're all really struggling.
Subscribe here for the latest news where you live
“Overall, we’ve been overwhelmed by the response and with flowers, it was like Kew Gardens. We own a pub in the Cambridge area and it was awash with flowers and Edd’s house too, we couldn’t move for flowers.
“She was even more popular than I realised she was, and I thought she was popular – I'm surprised by the number of people who have popped up in the comments and that sort of thing. Any family holidays she’d be sailing, she played tennis, cycled and canoed, we had a little boat that she used all the time.
“When she went cycling she made sure there were seats on the bikes for the kids and it was the same with canoeing, she had them involved in everything. On the back of people asking what they could do, we started a GoFundMe – there are a lot of benches that need replacing in the park and the initial drive was to raise money for memorial benches.
“We set a target initially of £5,000 and it now stands at £20,000 – we will use this fund for a cause close to Katy’s heart, to make sure the kids can have the best opportunities. We're going to ringfence those funds for whatever they’re doing when they get to 18.”
