Mystery heart attack kills girl, six

Fun-loving Charley Stone suffered a massive heart attack while riding her bike, collapsed and later died - aged six.

Now distraught parents Shane and Sam fear her three-year-old sister may suffer from the same mystery illness.

Tests on Charley's body found that the primary school pupil, who was good at PE and loved dancing, had no health defects.

Father Shane, 26, said yesterday: 'The post-mortem tests came back normal - everything was normal right up until that split second where something happened to her heart.

'We took her to hospital and she seemed to make progress but then she just deteriorated, and we had to let her go.

'The cause of death is brain damage due to her heart beating so fast, but the initial "Why?" is something we still don't know even now.

'I'm terrified for my three-year-old daughter, Emily. I can't imagine it happening again - I don't know what we'd do.'

Charley's mother Sam Tucker, 23, said the two sisters were very close, and Emily cannot understand what has happened.

'She knows that Charley had a poorly heart and that she's gone,' she said. 'But she's absolutely heartbroken and lonely.

'Until this happened, the worst thing Charley had ever had was an ear infection.

'There had never been any signs that anything was wrong.

'She was riding her little sister's tricycle when she suddenly just slumped on to the grass.

'I thought she was messing around and I was telling her off, telling her to get up because she was getting dirty.

'But as I walked over I saw that she wasn't moving at all. I picked her up and took her to a neighbour's house to phone for an ambulance.'

Charley was in Derriford Hospital in Plymouth for three weeks before she died.

'We stayed by her side until the very end,' said Ms Tucker.