THOUSAND OAKS : Heart Defect Caused Girl Runner’s Death
A 13-year-old Culver City girl who collapsed after a track race at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks died because of a congenital heart defect, according to an autopsy report released Saturday.
Kimberly Howling collapsed and died after handing off her baton in an 880-relay race Friday afternoon, said coroner’s investigator Jim Wingate.
“Her heart did not develop properly,” Wingate said. “There was a defect in the left coronary artery and under extreme stress she had a heart attack.”
Howling had had annual physical tests for the past seven years, but the heart defect was not something that would have been discovered in a normal examination, Wingate said.
Howling, a seventh-grader at Westchester Lutheran School in Los Angeles, was competing against students from six other parochial schools.
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