A family is mourning the loss of their 13-year-old daughter who collapsed at the movies as her father recalls how the horrific moment went down.
She was planning a sleepover
Kasey-Lei Greene, 13, suffered a cardiac arrest at a movie theatre in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on September 4, according to Birmingham Live.
Her father Marc, 37, shared that she was planning to have a sleepover with a friend that evening.
Her friend alerted her father
Marc told the outlet that less than an hour after he left Kasey-Lei at the mall at around 5:30 p.m, her friend took her phone and alerted him that something had happened.
“[Her friend] called me from Kasey’s phone and said ‘Kasey’s passed out,” the father recalled.
The father ran to save his child
“I literally ran to the car. The cinema is not even half a mile from my house. She had passed out in the cinema watching the movie,” Marc added.
An ambulance crew showed up for Kasey-Lei, who had moved from the U.K. with family to Abu Dhabi in 2024.
Marc recalled holding his daughter
“They had a defibrillator and an ambulance crew had come in 10 minutes and had a machine on her,” the father continued.
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“I was literally screaming, holding her hand. I let them do what they could, but I could see she had gone,” he added.
They worked on her for two hours
Emergency personnel spent two hours trying to work on the 13-year-old before transporting her to a local hospital.
The father said she had suffered a cardiac arrest, adding that she ‘had had a few issues before’.
Marc recalled his last exchange with her
The mourning father also recounted the last exchange he shared with his daughter before her death, as she was leaving the house for the movies.
Heartbreakingly, he said, “She just grabbed me and said to her friend, ’Quick, take a picture of me and my dad.’”
He felt touched by the final exchange
The father added of his daughter, “She held me so tight like she knew that was the last time I would ever feel or hear her voice again.”
“Normally she would plan it and add filters and redo it if it wasn’t right – but not this time,” he continued. “That hug blows my mind.”
The family returned to the U.K. for her funeral
Birmingham Live reported that Kasey-Lei’s family returned to their hometown in the Birmingham area in the U.K. for her funeral on October 3.
The teenager received a lot of love as more than 600 people attended the funeral, per the outlet, including friends and classmates in Abu Dhabi who tuned in online to pay their respects.
Her parents recalled her spirit
“She made friends very easily. From all walks of life,” the father, who set up a GoFundMe in his daughter’s memory, said. “She would bring people home and her friends would call us aunty and uncle. Our house was like a meeting place.”
“She drew people to her,” her mother added. “One girl came up and said ‘You’re really beautiful.’ She went out and just found people.”
