A New Zealand family and their community are grieving the death of “very healthy” teenager William Jones, who was found unresponsive in his bed last month.
The 16-year-old from Upper Hutt, Wellington, is believed to have come down with a flu, after reporting a snotty nose and sore throat just days earlier.
His mother, Rebecca Rollason, called the doctor on June 11, two days after her son’s symptoms began, and was told William had the flu, the New Zealand Herald reports.
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She was instructed to give William plenty of fluids and check back in the next day if she was still worried — but the next morning, her son did not wake up.
“It feels like the worst nightmare that we cannot wake from,” Rollason told the New Zealand Herald.
“We just don’t understand how this can happen to a boy who was barely ever sick and was very healthy.
“No one understands, we don’t know what happened. We have to wait for results.”
William had just passed his driver’s test and was a musician and a popular student at Upper Hutt College, according to a Givealittle fundraiser created by Rollason’s friend Amanda Amies.
Funds from the campaign will be used to alleviate funeral costs and support Rollason, and William’s two brothers, “while they grieve and come to terms with William’s passing” and alleviate funeral costs.
Among the donations were notes of support from other parents, some of who described having also lost, or nearly lost, their children to the flu.
“I completely understand your grief, my heart aches for you,” one person wrote.
“It is every parent’s worst nightmare and a shocking tragedy to lose a healthy child from a sudden and brief illness,” Amies said.