Six-year-old Emily Muth first fell ill with the flu on Jan. 16. Three days later, she had difficulty breathing, so her mother, Rhonda Muth, called for an ambulance.
Muth said a paramedic told her that labored breathing was a common symptom of the flu, so the ambulance was sent back. But Emily's breathing continued to slow, and when paramedics returned a second time, it was too late.
Emily's sudden death was heartbreaking and unsettling to her parents and her 8- and 10-year-old brothers, Muth said.
"How could that even happen? I mean one day she's fine, you know, and I mean she had the fever and she was a little achy," Muth told ABC11 in Raleigh, North Carolina.