Mum pays tribute to ‘beautiful boy’, 14, who didn’t wake up for school

A heartbroken mum has paid tribute to her 14-year-old son who she found unconscious in bed when she went to wake him up for school.

Zoe Thompson ‘couldn’t have asked for a better son’, she said of her ‘beautiful boy’ Ben Horton. ‘You was my world.’

She went to get Ben, from Stockport, up for school just after 7am last Thursday.

He had told her ‘goodnight mum, love you’, the night before. But that morning Zoe found him unconscious in bed, with his lips and finger tips blue.

‘We rang 999 then I had to start CPR which you do not ever expect to be doing on your 14-year-old son’, Zoe said.

For two days, Ben was on life support at Manchester Royal Children’s Hospital. ‘He was very unstable’, she said.

‘The doctors and nurses did many scans, bloods and many more tests to find that the oxygen had been cut from Ben’s brains for a while which caused his brain to swell and damaged some brains cells.

‘Doctors said Ben had a 50/50 chance of pulling though. Ben wasn’t reacting to lights and his eyes was fixed and the life support was doing all the work for him.

‘After battling for two long days and nights Ben still wasn’t reacting, he sadly didn’t pull through.’

Ben’s life support was turned off at 12pm on Saturday, leaving his mother ‘totally heartbroken’. She will always live with his final words.

More than £7,000 has been raised through a GoFundMe launched to cover funeral costs. ‘Let’s give Ben the send off he deserves’, the description says.

People have been sharing their memories of Ben under a Facebook post shared by the Sir Robert Peel Hotel, which is collecting donations for the family.

Sophie Stevens said: ‘Ben was such a lovely, polite, caring boy, he always had a smile on his face, my heart goes out to his family at this devastating time, thinking of you all and sending so much love.’

Bryan Potts-Hargreaves said: ‘I remember coming to a Stockport Academy awards evening and Ben lifted my spirits with his smile singing on the stage.’

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