A fitness instructor and fundraiser for the British Heart Foundation has died suddenly in her sleep, aged 23.

Zoe Teale was unaware she was suffering from an undiagnosed heart defect that would ultimately take her life.

The popular former Bilston Swimming Club member died within a short time of going to bed after sharing a laugh and a joke with her father Peter.

The Express and Star reported her fundraising activities for the foundation, including combat workouts and a glow-in-the-dark aerobics class in April and June this year while she worked for Fitness First in Wednesbury.

Her devastated father Peter, aged 48, said today his wife, Julie, 47, and Zoe’s sister, Megan, 22, who discovered her dead at home in Cheslyn Hay, are struggling to come to terms with her death, adding that Zoe was fit, healthy, and “the last person in the world you would have thought had a heart defect”.

Mr Teale said: “She was laughing and joking with me. She had a mate round and went to bed at about quarter to midnight.

“Her sister found her the next day and called the ambulance. She had died between midnight and 1am.”

He added: “We have good days and bad days. We have ‘reality’ days where it hits you out of the blue that you are not going to see her again. I had to sign something for her funeral the other day and I was thinking I should be signing something for her wedding, not her burial.”

Mr Teale said Zoe, who attended Great Wyrley High School, was an enthusiastic swimmer for 10 years, having competed for Bilston Swimming Club and Birmingham University, where she studied for a sports degree.

He said the family are now focused on raising awareness of charity CRY (Cardiac Risk in the Young), which campaigns to get young people screened for potentially fatal heart defects, something which could have saved Zoe’s life.

He said: “We have to make people more aware.”

Her friends are organising fundraising events in her memory following her death on September 15.