X Factor and The Voice singer Natanya Brook has died suddenly aged 23.
The singer was also a semi-professional gamer and was playing Xbox with her friends online at the time of her death, an inquest heard.
According to the inquest, Natanya, also known as Tanya, had stayed up until around 2am on 1 August 2021, and had been in the middle of a game when she suddenly fell silent.
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The following morning her mum, Jenny Brook, checked her room at their home in Aylesford, near Maidstone, Kent, to find her daughter laying up against the bed, but thought she was asleep.
A few hours later she returned and found her daughter in the same position and knew something was wrong.
She tried CPR and frantically rang the emergency services, but Tanya was pronounced dead by paramedics.
Ms Brook’s mum, Jenny, told the court Tanya’s gaming friends who were playing with her at the time, remembered hearing the gamer suddenly say “ooh, I feel...” and then silence.
Jenny said: “It’s like a light switch went out. That brings me a little bit of peace as I know she wasn’t in any sort of pain as they would have heard it.
“I still have a gaping hole in me and miss her as she was such an amazing bright light in my life.”
The 23-year-old had a history of absent and vacant seizures, including having childhood absence epilepsy at the age of six - a condition which results in the sudden loss of awareness and to stare into space for a few seconds.
A post-mortem report from Dr Deirdre McKenna revealed there were no abnormalities in any of Ms Brook’s major organs and that she was unable to find the exact mechanism which caused her death.
But she found that on the balance of probabilities the medical cause of death was sudden unexpected death in epilepsy.
Tanya was a passionate gamer who played on a team at a “very good” level.
She was also a talented singer who loved to sing, having auditioned for The X Factor and The Voice.
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