Huge update in the case of the British teenager who went missing in Thailand last week, only to pop up 4,000 miles away in Georgia, where she was arrested at at Tbilisi International Airport after 14kg of cannabis was found in her luggage.
Bella May Culley, 18, told Tbilisi city court today that she’s pregnant, which isn’t exactly ideal when you’re looking 20 years – life imprisonment for international drugs smuggling.
Bella had flown out to the Philippines just after Easter and then moved on to Thailand, regularly sharing pictures and updates on social media.
On Tuesday, May 6, she went quiet and wasn’t answering phone calls, sparking a massive international search operation, as well as promoting her father and sister to fly out to Thailand to look for her.
Turns out she was already 4,000 miles away in another country on another continent, and had somehow ended up as a drug mule looking at life in prison. Can’t even begin to imagine how mortified her family must have been at hearing that news.
Her mum Lyanne told The Sun that she had a feeling this trip to Asia was a bad idea:
‘I really didn’t want her to go to Thailand. I begged her to come home. I don’t trust some of the boys over there.
‘But she wanted to meet up with some friends she made over there on a previous trip. I don’t know who any of them are.
‘When she stopped answering messages, I assumed it was because she was flying back to surprise me. But then nothing.’
So in addition to learning their daughter/sister is an international drugs smuggler, Bella’s family now have to deal with the news that she’s pregnant. Can you imagine if the Georgian gangster (presumably) that convinced Bella to carry 14KG of cannabis into Georgia is the same person who has got her pregnant? What a nightmare that would be.
Of course, there’s also a chance that Bella isn’t pregnant, but it would be pretty pointless for her to lie about that because Georgian authorities will obviously send her for a medical examination to confirm. If she is pregnant, how much does the situation change for Bella?
Best case scenario – the British government will negotiate her release to the UK where the justice system here can decided what to do with her.
Given the UK’s recent form for letting international female drug mules off the hook for smuggling cannabis into Britain, Bella (and her unborn baby) may just get away with it. Better hope so, anyway.
