A family from Illinois said their goodbyes to their 15-year-old daughter who died early Tuesday morning after testing positive for COVID-19, only three days after first showing symptoms.  

The DuPage County Coroner’s Office released a statement Thursday saying the girl’s official cause of death was pending due to ongoing investigation. They said it could be “several weeks” before more would be known, NBC Chicago reported.  

According to WGN 9 News, Dakota Morgan died at 3:05 a.m. in Lurie Children’s Hospital after being rushed from Central DuPage Hospital due to the staff’s limited equipment and the teen’s worsening symptoms. 

“She was perfectly healthy,” the girl’s parents said.

They said Dykota, who was a freshman at Bolingbrook High School had yearly doctor visits and was active in multiple sports including basketball and cross country. 

“She got COVID and it took her,” said Rashad Bingham, Morgan’s father.Dykota’s mother, Krystal Morgan, said the teen had originally complained of headaches for the past two weeks, according to KTLA 5. On Saturday she said her daughter just wanted to sleep, but on Sunday things changed.     

“We were out early and she called us and said she woke up feeling dizzy and weak and she was coughing on the phone,” Morgan said.

According to NBC Chicago, Dykota’s mother said she was quick to get her daughter tested and the rapid result came back positive. She bought the entire family rapid COVID-19 tests, but aside from her eldest daughter, no one else had contracted the virus, she said.   

By Monday afternoon she said Dykota’s condition only exacerbated.   

“She FaceTimed me and said, ‘Mom, I’m too weak to come get the soup out of bed,’ and I’m like, ‘You’re too weak? She’s like, ‘Yeah and I don’t wanna be alone. Can one of y’all just come stay in there with me?'” Morgan said.

Both parents stayed with her that night, NBC Chicago reported. 

Dykota showed signs of a fever due to excessive sweating but Morgan said she knew her daughter was really sick when the teen became too weak to do anything for herself. When Dykota started feeling cold to the touch she said it was time to head to the hospital, KTLA 5 reported.   

“She was like, ‘Mom, why did this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?’ And I told her, ‘You didn’t do anything to deserve this, Dykota,'” Morgan (mother) said.  

After being admitted to the first hospital Monday night, Dykota’s blood pressure had dropped significantly. According to NBC Chicago, her parents were told she would have to be transferred to a different hospital as her condition was still deteriorating. The initial plan was for her to be taken via helicopter but due to weather conditions Dykota was transported by vehicle. 

Dykota’s kidneys started to fail and she complained of stomach pains but finally at Lurie Children’s, her parents were asked to say their final goodbyes. Dykota had been in a medically induced coma.    

“Those doctors and nurses, they worked tirelessly for the next hour, manually doing CPR on her chest, and they said that her heart was just too weak and she couldn’t take it anymore and they had to just, they had, they did everything that they could do,” Morgan said.

Dykota’s saddening death, however, is not singular in nature. In December, an 18-year-old in Illinois died just three days have been hospitalized with COVID-19. Several other cases of youth COVID deaths have been reported across the country. According to a CDC study from September of last year, most young adults and children that died of the virus were Hispanic and Black.   

Now, Dykota’s parents are urging for parents to acknowledge that the virus is far from gone. They hope families are proactive and continue to prioritize the vaccine so other children can be protected, KTLA 5 reported.