5-Year-Old Daughter Of First Responders Dies From Coronavirus Complications

5-Year-Old Daughter Of First Responders Dies From Coronavirus Complications

A 5-year-old daughter of first-responder parents died Sunday of complications related to the coronavirus.

Skylar Herbert, who complained to her parents about a headache earlier this month, was the youngest child in Michigan to lose her life to the virus, ABC News reported. She was surrounded by her family and a team of doctors who had been treating her when she died at Beaumont Hospital near Detroit.

The girl’s mother, LaVondria Herbert, has been a police officer for 25 years. Her father, Ebbie Herbert, has been a firefighter for 18. Skylar hoped to follow in her parents’ footsteps by becoming a pediatric dentist.

Her parents told WXYZ that their child developed a rare form of meningitis earlier this month after testing positive for the virus. She was put on a ventilator for two weeks before she died.

“Skylar is out here, and she’s shining her light for us to tell the world this can happen to any family,” her father told the station.

Her mother urged people to practice safety measures to help slow the spread of the virus.

“Practice the social distancing, wear the masks, keep washing your hands,” LaVondria Herbert said to ABC News. “I don’t understand how people don’t know how to sit down and relax. ... This is affecting everybody around the country.”

More than 40,000 Americans have died from COVID-19, and hundreds of thousands have been infected across the country.


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This article originally appeared on HuffPost.