ROCHESTER — A 7-year-old Oak Park Heights boy has died just months after receiving a new heart.

The parents of Cameron Edward Ulrich say their son passed away Wednesday night at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. Rob and Kari Ulrich say “quite unexpectedly, he just stopped breathing and his heart stopped beating.”

Ulrich was born with a rare heart defect and has survived in recent months hooked to a machine that functioned as his heart and lungs. He had been waiting for a heart since last October.

Doctors at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis implanted a pacemaker when Cameron was just 12 days old. His family says his heart worked fairly well until last year when an echocardiogram revealed the organ was failing.