“Milly-Sue was just who she was in her own ways and I am so grateful she got to do that.”
A mother in the UK has opened up about her grief after finding her 11-year-old daughter dead in her bed.
Kayleigh Owens, from Wallasey, Wirral, found her daughter Milly-Sue to be unmoving when she went to wake her up for school on a Monday morning last month.
The tragedy occurred sometime during the night between Sunday the 13th and Monday the 14th of June.
Kayleigh had put five-year-old son Dante, with whom Milly-Sue shared a room, to bed and then at around 10.30pm she asked her daughter to hand over her phone to make sure she got enough sleep for school the next morning.
Shortly after, Milly-Sue got up to get a drink and briefly played with the family dog. She told her mother goodnight and that she loved her before heading back to bed.
The next morning, Kayleigh went in to Milly-Sue and Dante’s room. After closing the window over Milly-Sue’s bed, she noticed the girl wasn’t moving and began shouting her name.
When Milly-Sue remained unresponsive, Kayleigh’s partner rang an ambulance and began doing CPR on her. Tragically, the girl could not be resuscitated.
“The paramedics told us even with the CPR it was too late. I don’t remember anything after that,” Kayleigh told the Liverpool Echo.
Answers on Milly-Sue’s death are desperately awaited by the girl’s family, which include her other brothers Cameron, 15, and Carter, 13, her little sister Gracie, Kayleigh’s partner Robert, her dad Andrew and her step-mum Helen. They’re left waiting until the coroner’s report in September.
Still reeling from the loss of her “caring and unique” daughter, Kayleigh says she still hasn’t put Dante back in his room as she finds it too hard to face.
“Dante always asks for her, Cameron stays at his dad’s a bit longer on Sundays because it is the hardest part of the week when she doesn’t come home,” she said.
The mother adds she’s still in a state of shock herself and keeps “expecting her to walk through the door.”
“I don’t think it has sunk in yet. I remember seeing her in her coffin and her make up was done just the way she used to do it – she was better than me at make up, she would have a little pink nose and eyeliner.
“But it just looked like she was sleeping, she looked just like my Milly-Sue, it made it so hard for me to accept that it was real.”
As “fearless” Milly-Sue loved dressing up in cosplay outfits of her favourite anime characters, the family picked out an anime princess coffin and blue dress for her. Her unique style and ability to be herself unapologetically is a great inspiration to her mother.
“I am just so glad Milly-Sue was able to be who she was before she went out of this world because there is so much pressure on young people from social media to be a certain way,” Kayleigh said.
“Milly-Sue was just who she was in her own ways and I am so grateful she got to do that.”
