Miss Teen Universe Winner Dead at Age 20

A former Miss Teen Universe has died after suffering a totally unexpected heart attack two weeks ago, People reports. Lotte van der Zee was hospitalized and suffered organ failure before her death Wednesday at age 20. "Our pearl, our everything passed away on Wednesday evening March 6th at 22:47," her parents, Bert van der Zee and Eugeniek van het Hul, write on Instagram. "It is incredibly surreal that our dearly beloved Lotte is not around us anymore. Our hearts are truly broken." Lotte's mother says they took her off the machine at a Munich hospital when it became clear she wasn't improving.

"Lotte has had to endure a lot over the past few days," she tells the Evening Standard. "We did not want any further suffering." What caused the Dutch model's heart attack is unknown, but she seemed fine while vacationing with family in Austria. After an evening out with friends, she fell ill the next morning had to be resuscitated following her cardiac arrest, per Fox News. "I can not understand this," a model wrote on the 2017 pageant winner's Instagram page, per the Daily News. "Lotte was a beautiful, sweet, spontaneous girl and made this hard world a lot nicer and more enjoyable for me." (More heart attack stories.)