Casten Attributes 17-Year-Old Daughter's Death To 'Cardiac Arrhythmia'

DOWNERS GROVE, IL — Congressman Sean Casten (IL-06) said his 17-year-old daughter, Gwen, died of a sudden cardiac arrhythmia in June. The teen had gone to bed after spending the evening with friends and never woke up the next morning.

“In layman’s terms, she was fine, and then her heart stopped,” Casten said in a statement. “We don’t know what caused the arrhythmia, and likely never will.”

Gwen Casten died June 13 in the final weeks leading up to her father’s Democratic primary in Illinois’s 6th Congressional District. Casten described his daughter as a “healthy 2022 teenager” who didn’t suffer from any behavioral health issues, and had close relationships with family and friends.

“She was fully vaccinated, and quarantined after occasional positive, asymptomatic COVID tests during the omicron wave,” Casten’s statement read. “She had just come home from an evening with friends, went to bed and didn’t wake up.”

The teen had just graduated from Downers Grove North High School, where her passions were activism and music. Gwen was the co-director of March 4 Our Lives Illinois Chapter, a national group founded by survivors of the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School mass shooting in Parkland, FL. She also appeared in a political ad for her father in the weeks leading up to the Democratic primary in Illinois’s 6th Congressional District.

Sudden, unexplained heart-failure among young, healthy people is rare but real. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 2,000 young, seemingly healthy people under age 25 in the United States die each year of sudden cardiac arrest.

Casten said his family was grateful for the outpouring of kind messages, letters, meals and flowers they received since his daughter’s death.

“It is a comfort to know how many lives Gwen touched over her 17 years,” Casten said. “She had a big, beautiful, kind, loving heart. And it stopped, as all must.”

“None of us know when our last heartbeat will come,” he continued. "The best we can hope for is that when our loved ones do pass, we will have no regrets about the time we were lucky enough to share.

“So hug the folks you love a little harder today. Be present in their lives. And spread your love a little farther. Because in the end, it’s all that remains.”

The Casten family will be issuing no further statements and requests privacy.