Georgia

Georgia O’Connor, a British boxer who was unbeaten in her young professional career, has died at age 25.

The promotion company BOXXER said in a statement Thursday that it was “heartbroken by the passing” of a fighter it had represented for all three of her professional bouts.

“A true warrior inside and outside the ring, the boxing community has lost a talented, courageous and determined young woman far too soon,” the company wrote. “Georgia was loved, respected and admired by her friends here at BOXXER. Our thoughts are with her loved ones at this difficult time.”

No cause of death has been given, but O’Connor had revealed on Jan. 31 on Instagram that she had been diagnosed with cancer.

“I’m still smiling and that smile will NEVER fade, no matter what,” she wrote. “We’ve already got an amazing oncologist on my case and we’ve made sure I’m going to have the best treatment and healing possible. Starting NOW.”

A GoFundMe page, which O’Connor had said was set up by her parents to help cover her medical bills, described the cancer as “rare and aggressive.”

“Doctors are calling it ‘incurable,’” the fundraiser’s description states.

“But Georgia does not accept this.”

O’Connor is survived by her husband Adriano Cardinali, whom she married May 9.

Georgia O Connor attends an event at the Royal Albert Hall on March 7 in London.

(Jordan Peck / Getty Images)

“From the moment I was diagnosed with cancer, Adriano didn’t hesitate,” O’Connor wrote Feb. 3 on Instagram. “He quit his job without a second thought and made it his mission to fight this battle alongside me. Not just by my side, but leading the charge, doing everything in his power to save me.”

O’Connor was born Feb 18. 2000, in County Durham, England. Her father introduced her to boxing very soon afterward, she told SkySports in 2021.

“My dad put a pair of gloves on me before I could walk,” she said. “He always wanted me to be able to look after me. He never wanted me to be a superstar, my family aren’t like that. He just wanted me to defend myself because the world isn’t a nice place.”

She added: “I was a three-time national taekwondo champion, undefeated in kickboxing, but my heart has always been with boxing.”

As a youth boxer, O’Connor won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Youth Games in 2017 and a silver and bronze at the Youth World Championships in 2017 and 2018. She won all three of her professional fights, between October 2021 and October 2022, later revealing she did so while suffering from what was eventually diagnosed as ulcerative colitis.

“I was going to the toilet between 15 and 20 times per day,” O’Connor wrote Feb. 9, 2024, on Instagram. “… I had pain in my joints and unbearable bowel cramps almost every day. I had 3 professional boxing fights during this time, all of which I somehow managed to win without any form of medication or treatment.”

O’Connor also revealed in February on Instagram that she had suffered a miscarriage within “the last few months.”

England Boxing paid tribute on Thursday to one of its rising stars in a statement .

“A hugely talented boxer and much-loved member of the boxing community, Georgia inspired many with her achievements in the ring and her spirit outside of it,” the sport’s governing body in England wrote. “Her dedication, passion, and talent made her a role model for young athletes across the country. Georgia’s legacy will live on in the hearts of those she inspired, and she will be deeply missed by all who knew her.”

International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Organization super bantamweight champion Ellie Scotney addresssed her late friend on Instagram.

“Being a pure soul and a good person gets thrown around so much, but you my friend are the definition of every word of that and so much more,” Scotney wrote. “I still can picture that timid shy but larger than life young girl walking on her tip toes a few steps in front of me, little did I know that very same girl was going to show not just me but the whole world how special life is and mostly how to live by every second.

“Even when life was on a timer, you never let anything dim that light of yours. A smile that never ever fades, and a heart that will forever live on in so many ways. There was nothing you couldn’t do, the world at your very feet no matter what room you entered. I was so blessed with not just a friend for 10 years, but a sister for life.”

THE distraught father of drugs charge teenager Bella Culley has vowed to stand by his daughter – amid new fears Far East drugs gangs are targeting British backpackers.

Bella, 18, is on remand in a grim jail following her arrest in Georgia’s Tbilisi airport with a suitcase of cannabis after going missing 4,000 miles away in Thailand.

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Bella’s flight took off from the same Bangkok airport within hours of another pretty British trafficking suspect arrested with £1.2 million of a cannabis-related drug in Sri Lanka.

Former air stewardess Charlotte May Lee, 21, was in a gruesome Sri Lankan jail cell last night awaiting a court appearance.

Their arrests have sparked fears that Thai gangs may be hoodwinking vulnerable British backpackers into ferrying their drugs after a crackdown on postal trafficking.

Bella was facing at least nine months on remand in a grim Soviet-era jail alongside hardened criminals.

She had joked online of “Bonnie and Clyde” hijinks while showing off cash wads in the Far East and was pictured smoking a spliff.

Bella’s family from Billingham, County Durham are convinced she was preyed upon after flying to the Far East to party with a mystery man feared to have hooked her up with drugs runners.

Her dad Niel – a Vietnam-based oil rig electrician – flew to Tbilisi last week desperate for answers after tearful Bella told a court that she was pregnant.

But he has yet to meet his daughter within the drab confines of No5 Women’s Penitentiary on the outskirts of the Georgian capital and remains baffled by her plight.

Asked about his plans after arriving in Tbilisi, Mr Culley, 49, told The Sun today: “I can’t say anything but I will be here for as long as it takes.

“I obviously have no experience in dealing with situations like this and it’s very difficult.”

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Appearing shaky as he puffed on a cigarette, the anxious dad at one point appeared ready to make a statement when asked how his daughter was bearing up in prison.

But he broke off to confer with Bella’s aunt Kerrie Culley – who is supporting him in Georgia – and returned shaking his head.

He added: “I’m being advised by the British Embassy and can’t comment at the moment.

“But that may change in the future depending on what happens.”

Fears are growing that a Thai drugs gang is preying on British backpackers this summer as Charlotte became the second Brit flying out of Bangkok to be arrested within days.

She was detained at Colombo airport in Sri Lanka on Monday – the day after Bella’s arrest – where police say she had a huge stash of kush – a synthetic strain of cannabis.

Charlotte from Chipstead, Surrey was last night locked in a cell with 20 other prisoners with barely room to lie down as she awaited a court hearing.

Bella took off first from Bangkok on a 20-hour flight via Sharjah in the UAE to Georgia while Charlotte left later on a three-hour direct flight to Sri Lanka.

Both girls departed from the Thai capital during the Royal Ploughing Ceremony weekend – one of the busiest festivals of the year when airports are crammed with tourists.

It is believed to have provided a prime opportunity for traffickers to operate mules – particularly attractive young Britons who arouse less suspicion.

The two arrests follow a huge crackdown on smugglers sending cannabis to the UK by post.

A joint operation by both countries has seen a 90 per cent in reduction in the drug being mailed to Britain since last year.

It suggests Thai gangs may now be reverting to using drug mules to ship their products instead – and targeting British backpackers.

Thailand decriminalised cannabis in 2022 which sparked a massive rise in the narcotic being posted to Britain.

The law change allowed traffickers to hoodwink trippers into believing transporting it was legal.

Thai checks of mail being shipped stopped 1.5 tonnes in the first quarter of this year – a 90 percent drop in the illicit cargo – in a drive which frustrated the gangs.

Some 800 people including 50 British nationals have been arrested in Thailand for attempted smuggling since July 2024 with over nine tonnes of cannabis seized.

Retired Georgian police chief General Jemal Janashia voiced concerns that backpackers were being targeted yesterday.

He said: “The fact that two young British women have taken off with large quantities of drugs from the same airport will interest investigators.

“They will be concerned about the possibility of a link and that Thai gangs may be attempting to recruit vulnerable British travellers.

“After the crackdown on postal drug deliveries, the Thai cartel are seeking new routes and Georgia does look like an attractive middle transit point.

“It’s relatively close, and easy to reach Europe and is visa free to European travellers.”

He added: “I feel sorry for this woman because she was clearly used and manipulated. She’s 18, she’s a foreigner, pregnant.

“All of this indicates that she was chosen deliberately, chosen carefully, she was studied.

“Whoever chose her, they knew what they were doing.”

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ATLANTA — The case of a pregnant woman in Georgia who was declared brain-dead and has been kept on life support for three months has given rise to complicated questions about abortion law and differing views about whether a fetus is a person.

Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old nurse and mother, was about two months pregnant on Feb. 19 when she was declared brain-dead, according to an online fundraising page started by her mother. Doctors said Georgia’s strict antiabortion law requires that she remain on life support until the fetus has developed enough to be delivered, her mother wrote.

The law, one of a wave of measures enacted in conservative states after the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade in 2022, restricts abortion once cardiac activity is detected and gives personhood rights to a fetus.

Smith’s mother says the law has left her family without a say in a difficult situation, and with her due date still months away, the family is left wondering whether the baby will be born with disabilities or can even survive. Some activists, many of them Black women like Smith, say it raises issues of racial equity.

What does the law say?

Emory Healthcare, which runs the hospital, has not explained how doctors decided to keep Smith on life support except to say in a statement that it considered “Georgia’s abortion laws and all other applicable laws.”

The state adopted a law in 2019 to ban abortion after cardiac activity can be detected, about six weeks into pregnancy, that came into effect after Roe was overturned.

That law does not explicitly address Smith’s situation, but allows abortion to preserve the life or physical health of the pregnant woman. Three other states have similar bans that kick in around the six-week mark, and 12 bar abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

David S. Cohen, a professor at Drexel University’s Thomas R. Kline School of Law in Philadelphia, said the hospital might be most concerned about part of the law that gives fetuses legal rights as “members of the species Homo sapiens.”

Cohen said that Emory may therefore consider Smith and the fetus as two patients and that once Smith was on life support, the hospital had a legal obligation to keep the fetus alive, even after Smith was considered brain-dead.

“These are the kind of cases that law professors have been talking about for a long time when they talk about fetal personhood,” he said.

State Rep. Nabilah Islam Parkes, an Atlanta-area Democrat, said Friday that she sent a letter to state Atty. Gen. Chris Carr asking for a legal opinion on how Georgia’s abortion law applies when a pregnant woman is brain-dead.

Divide within antiabortion movement

Antiabortion groups are divided over whether they should support personhood provisions, which are on the books in at least 17 states, according to the advocacy group Pregnancy Justice.

Some argue that fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses should be considered people with the same rights as babies after birth. This personhood concept seeks to give them rights under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says a state can’t “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process or law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Some saw personhood as politically impractical, especially after personhood amendments to state constitutions were rejected by voters in Colorado, Mississippi and North Dakota between 2008 and 2014. Those who steered away sought laws and restrictions on abortion that stopped short of personhood, although they were often informed by the concept.

Personhood proponents argue this lacks moral clarity. Some personhood proponents have been sidelined in national antiabortion groups; the National Right to Life Committee cut ties with its Georgia Right to Life affiliate in 2014 after the state wing opposed bills that restricted abortion but allowed exceptions for rape and incest.

Unequal access to care for Black women

The Associated Press has not been able to reach Smith’s mother, April Newkirk. But Newkirk told Atlanta TV station WXIA that her daughter went to a hospital complaining of headaches and was given medication and released. Then, her boyfriend awoke to her gasping for air and called 911. Emory University Hospital determined she had blood clots in her brain and she was declared brain-dead.

It’s not clear what Smith said when she went to the hospital or whether the care she was given was standard for her symptoms. But Black women often report that their pain isn’t taken seriously, and an Associated Press investigation found that health outcomes for Black women are worse because of circumstances linked to racism and unequal access to care.

Monica Simpson, executive director of SisterSong, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Georgia’s abortion law, said: “Black women must be trusted when it comes to our healthcare decisions.”

“Like so many Black women, Adriana spoke up for herself. She expressed what she felt in her body, and as a healthcare provider, she knew how to navigate the medical system,” Simpson said, noting that by the time Smith was diagnosed “it was already too late.”

It’s unclear whether the clots in Smith’s brain were related to her pregnancy.

But her situation is undoubtedly alarming for those seeking solutions to disparities in the maternal mortality rate among Black women. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women had a mortality rate of 50.3 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2023. That’s more than three times the rate for white women, and it is higher than the rates for Latino and Asian women.

What is Smith’s current situation?

While Smith is on a ventilator and probably other life-support devices, being declared brain-dead means she is dead.

Some experts refer to “life support” as “maintenance measures,” “organ support” or “somatic support,” which relates to the body as distinct from the mind.

Emory has not made public what is being done to allow Smith’s fetus to continue to develop.

In another case in Florida, doctors successfully delivered the baby of a 31-year-old woman who was declared brain-dead while 22 weeks pregnant, but not without weeks of sustained monitoring, testing and medical care. The woman’s family wanted to keep the fetus, physicians with the University of Florida College of Medicine said in a 2023 paper.

On her first day of admission, doctors administered hormones to raise her blood pressure and placed a feeding tube. After she was transferred to an intensive care unit, an obstetric nurse stayed by her bedside continuously to monitor the fetus’ heart rate and movements.

She was on a ventilator, regularly received steroids and hormones, and needed multiple antibiotics to treat pneumonia. Her medical team encompassed multiple specialties: obstetrics, neonatology, radiology and endocrinology.

Doctors performed surgery to remove the fetus at 33 weeks when its heart rate fell, and the baby appeared to be in good health at birth.

“We don’t have great science to guide clinical decision-making in these cases,” said Dr. Kavita Arora, an obstetrician and gynecologist in North Carolina who raised concerns about the effect of prolonged ventilator use on a fetus. “There simply aren’t a lot of cases like this.”

The 2023 paper warned that “costs should not be underestimated.”

It is not clear whether Smith, whose mother said she was a nurse at Emory University Hospital, had health insurance. But JoAnn Volk, a professor, founder and co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University, said that for people with health insurance, it’s generally up to the insurer to determine whether care is medically necessary and covered under the plan.

While it is unclear how much it will cost to keep Smith on life support until the fetus can be delivered, or who will be responsible for that cost, her mother’s GoFundMe page mentions Smith’s 7-year-old son and notes that the baby could have significant disabilities as the effort aims to raise $275,000.

Associated Press writers Brumback and Thanawala reported from Atlanta and Mulvihill from Cherry Hill, N.J. AP writer Jeff Amy in Atlanta contributed to this report.

A BRIT teen held in Georgia accused of smuggling 30lb of marijuana is the great-granddaughter of a Labour MP who was caught up in the parliamentary expenses scandal.

Bella May Culley faces life in prison in a brutal ex-Soviet slammer after she was arrested at Tbilisi airport on suspicion of drug smuggling.

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The 18-year-old appeared in court earlier this week, where she said was pregnant before stating she would reserve the right to remain silent.

But the nursing student from County Durham is the great-granddaughter of ex-Stockton North Labour MP Frank Cook, who passed away in 2012, the MailOnline has reported.

Culley is reported to regularly post pictures with her “special lady” grandmother – who is the late MP’s daughter.

In one post wishing her happy birthday, she says she loves her “unconditionally” before calling her “one of the most important ladies in my life”.

Cook, who represented Stockton North for 27 years, was among the MPs implicated in the 2009 expenses row that rocked Westminster to its core.

It transpired he had claimed for £153,902, which included a £5 donation made by an aide representing him at a memorial service. 

However, he would later explain this donation was an IOU from the member of staff who went to the service on his behalf – and that he expensed it by mistake.

“It was a genuine mistake and I stress again: I would never deliberately make a claim of this kind,” he said.

He would later lose a libel case against The Sunday Telegraph following the revelations.

Cook stood as an independent candidate in his constituency at the 2010 general election after being deselected by Labour, but he failed to retain the seat.

He died in 2012 at the age of 76 – a year after being diagnosed with lung cancer. 

Culley was arrested after she was allegedly caught trying to sneak 34 bags of marijuana in her luggage through the Georgian capital’s main airport.

She had been reported missing in Thailand – where she had been travelling – before she was arrested 4,000 miles away.

Her family had raised the alarm after she failed to contact anyone since Saturday – despite usually being a prolific texter.

Her dad Neil Culley, who lives in Vietnam, has reportedly flown to the Eastern European nation to be by his daughter’s side.

A loved-one said: “She is just a student – she doesn’t really go out or do anything like that. She just wanted a break so took herself to Thailand.

“She must have become mixed up with someone. She must have met someone who has taken advantage of her.”

Authorities in Georgia claim she tried to stash 34 bags of cannabis in her luggage which was detected at the airport.

Georgia’s Interior Ministry says she could face 20 years or even a life sentence in an overcrowded Women’s Penitentiary No. 5 in Rustavi

The country has been blasted for its treatment of its prisoners by rights groups.

Culley’s paternal grandfather said: “I’m terrified that she’s in for a long sentence. I might never see her again – I’m 80 years old.

“She’s got sucked into something, somehow. She’s not an international drug trafficker.

“It’s all just very strange and at the moment we just don’t have any answers. We don’t know what to think.”

Bella’s lawyer said after her court appearance: “My client is currently exercising the right to remain silent, so we will provide detailed information later, once they decide how to proceed.”

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