A former Miss Teen Universe has died aged just 20 after being in a coma for two weeks following a heart attack.
Lotte van der Zee, from Enschede in the Netherlands, had collapsed while on a skiing holiday in Austria with her family.
She fell ill just a day before her 20th birthday.
Her parents Bert and Eugeniek van der Zee said they had decided to “let her go” after doctors told them the professional model’s organs had stopped working.
In a tribute posted to their daughter’s 170,000 Instagram followers, they wrote: “Our pearl, our everything passed away on Wednesday evening March 6 at 22:47.
“It is incredibly surreal that our dearly beloved Lotte is not around us anymore. Our hearts are truly broken. We would like to thank you all again for all the support and heart warming messages.”
Miss van der Zee had been treated to the ski trip to celebrate her birthday and had returned from a night out with friends when she is understood to have complained of chest pains.
Reports suggest she was found unresponsive the next morning after failing to come out for breakfast.
She was and taken to a local hospital near the resort village of Westendorf, where she was placed in a medically-induced coma, before being transferred to a larger hospital in Germany, where she died.
