Yara Da Cruz, 30, was found dead at home in Porters Avenue, Dagenham, on February 20, 2024.
But the cause of her death will likely never be known.
An inquest heard on Thursday (May 1) how a life-long friend rushed to the property after Ms Da Cruz’s daughters were unable to rouse her.
After getting her youngest daughter to open the front door, Sara Silva found her long-time friend laying face down in bed.
“I touched her and noticed that she was cold,” she wrote in a statement. “I immediately called 999.”
When paramedics arrived, they reported, they found loved ones “screaming for help and asking us to come quickly”.
But when they entered the room, “the patient was obviously deceased.”
Rigor mortis – the stiffening of the body – had already set in, as had “post-mortem staining”, also known as lividity, when blood stops pumping and pools in the lowest parts of the body, causing discolouration.
A comprehensive investigation failed to turn up any evidence at all pointing to a cause of death, coroner Nadia Persaud told East London Coroner’s Court.
No injuries were found on Ms Da Cruz’s body and there was no evidence at all of drug or alcohol abuse.
A post-mortem found no evidence of any internal condition which could have caused her death, even after cardiology and neurology experts carefully examined her heart and brain.
Sgt Owen Herbert said: “Her five-year-old daughter stated that mummy had grabbed her arm and then fell asleep.”
Ms Da Cruz had last visited her GP – Dr Matthew Hope, of the Corner Surgery in Denmark Hill – in December 2023 with breathing problems and a tight chest, possibly linked to asthma.
“She was under stress as she had moved to a different house,” he wrote in a statement. “She had been moved to temporary accommodation in Barking.”
She told him she was not eating or sleeping properly.
But, he added, her death was “completely unexpected and a huge shock”.
Mrs Persaud recorded an open conclusion and listed Ms Da Cruz’s cause of death as “unascertained”.
“I would like to pass on the sympathies of the court to Yara’s family and also to her friends,” she said.
