Shock as carer Heather Pyke from Bow dies on family holiday in Turkey

Heather with her family on her 60th birthday. Picture: Pyke family (Image: Pyke family)

Heather Pyke, a 62-year-old carer from Fairfoot Road in Bromley-by-Bow, was taken ill two days into a family holiday with two daughters, a niece and a granddaughter.

Her nephew Dean Harding, 40 – a peer mentor working at the Headway East London brain injury charity in Kingsland Road, Haggerston – set up a crowdfunding page to fly her home while she was on life support.

But she died last night at 7.30 (London time) following a second heart attack.

Her daughter Victoria, who lived with Heather at Fairfoot Road, was at her bedside.

The crowdfund cash is still needed to pay for £14,000 medical bills and a further £20,000 to get her home for the funeral.

“We’re all still in shock,” Dean told the East London Advertiser this-morning.

“Heather had been in coma all the time and never regained consciousness while on life-support.”

Heather had been in a coma since July 22 when she coll,pased in her hotel room at the Turkish resort of Marmaris. The family have managed to raise £7,500 from their bring Heather home crowdfunding so far.

Tragedy has struck the family before. Heather’s brother Keith Sinclair, 60, was stabbed to death in his flat in Bow Common in May.

Her husband Eddie died leaving her to raise four daughters on her own. One of her daughters died in childbirth in 2010 and she raised her granddaughter Scarlet, now aged seven, who was with her on the family holiday.

Heather’s nephew Dean Harding, 40, was featured in the Advertiser in 2005 recovering from brain injury and now works as a peer mentor at Headway East London.