Girl, 13, Dies After Collapsing at Movie Theater. Her Dad Recalls ‘Screaming, Holding Her Hand’ as EMTs Tried to Save Her

A family is mourning the loss of their 13-year-old daughter after she collapsed and suffered a cardiac arrest while at the movies.

Kasey-Lei Greene was at a movie theater in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on Sept. 4 when she collapsed, according to Birmingham Live.

Her father Marc, 37, told the outlet that his daughter was planning to have a sleepover with a friend that evening and she had convinced him to call the two girls a taxi to the Vox Cinema at Yas Mall.

Kasey-Lei — a British teenager who had moved from the U.K. to Abu Dhabi in 2024 — said goodbye to her father at around 5:30 p.m. and gave him a hug. Less than an hour later, Marc told the outlet, his daughter’s 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,'” Marc recalled. “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.”

“They had a defibrillator and an ambulance crew had come in 10 minutes and had a machine on her,” he continued. “I was literally screaming, holding her hand. I let them do what they could, but I could see she had gone.”

Emergency personnel worked on the 13-year-old for two hours before transporting her to a local hospital. According to the dad, Kasey-Lei had suffered a cardiac arrest, noting that she “had had a few issues before.”

Marc also recounted the heartbreaking last exchange he shared with his teenage daughter just before her death, as she was leaving the house to head to the movie theater.

“She just grabbed me and said to her friend, ’Quick, take a picture of me and my dad,’ ” he shared with the outlet. “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 added of the social media-loving teen. “That hug blows my mind.”

Birmingham Live reported that Marc, as well as Kasey-Lei’s mother, Manda, and her brother, Kian, returned to their U.K. hometown in the Birmingham area for the teen’s funeral on Oct. 3.

More than 600 people attended the funeral, per the outlet, and even more friends and classmates in Abu Dhabi tuned in online to watch the service.

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“She made friends very easily. From all walks of life,” Marc said of his daughter. “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,” added Kasey-Lei’s mom — who was already in Birmingham at the time of her daughter’s death to arrange her late mother’s funeral. “One girl came up and said ‘You’re really beautiful.’ She went out and just found people.”

According to Marc, the family has received thousands of messages of support in the wake of his daughter’s death.

“I am finding lots of comfort in people’s acknowledgment of her,” he told Birmingham Live. “I have been on auto-pilot since it happened. The last couple of days I think it’s got a little bit tougher.”

Following the teen’s death, her friends and family have organized a GoFundMe charity campaign to assist in building clean water wells in communities in Kenya, Tanzania and Cameroon.

“This stems from her friend TJ who is from a Muslim background. When somebody dies they do something good in the world,” Marc shared of the campaign.

“Kasey was full of life, laughter, and kindness. She had a huge heart and a smile that could light up any room. Our family sadly laid Kasey to rest in her hometown of Birmingham, but we now want her name and her spirit to continue touching lives around the world,” the GoFundMe page states. “Thank you for helping us create Kasey’s Wells of Life and continue her legacy of kindness and joy.”