What to Know
- A GoFundMe page has been established for a funeral and memorial.
- The flu has killed more than 100 people nationwide this season.
- A medical examiner will determine the boy's official cause of death.
A family is grieving after a 12-year-old boy from West Palm Beach died, possibly due to the flu amid a concerning nationwide outbreak.
Dylan Christopher Winnik, who studied at Okeeheelee Middle School, died Tuesday.
“To think that my little brother, I’m never going to see him again — it’s unexplainable," Sebastian Roa, Dylan's older brother, said. “How does this happen?”
Dylan's family thought he just had a cold – something usually much easier to recover from than the flu.
Dylan was not vaccinated this year, his stepfather Mike Medwin said, adding that everyone should take the flu seriously.
“Just yesterday before his passing, his father told me he had a gigantic pancake breakfast; conversing, just looking normal. His temperature was 98 degrees. And then, within a couple of hours, they found him," Medwin said.
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“I want people to not take this lightly ... Go to doctor, hospital, whatever you need to do. Go," Sebastian said.
The medical examiner's office will perform an autopsy to determine Dylan's exact cause of death.
The family set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for funeral expenses and a memorial in Dylan's memory.
"He was and will always be greatly loved by countless family and friends. There is nothing that can ever explain the loss of a beautiful child at such an early age," the website reads. "Dylan was highly intelligent, surprisingly funny, and always full of life busy with his two brothers."
The most aggressive strain of the flu this season, identified as Influenza A virus subtype H3N2, is partly to blame for the nationwide outbreak that has killed more than 100 people.
