Ultimate Fighting Championship boss Dana White has offered to bring Tumbler Ridge shooting survivor Maya Gebala to the U.S. for medical care, according to the girl’s mother.
Cia Edmonds made the revelation Wednesday evening in a social media post updating 12-year-old Maya’s condition.
“So today I (finally) got some good news,” the mother wrote.
An abscess caused by a bacterial infection had not grown in size and a sample taken from the abscess showed no cultures, Edmonds said.
“That’s a good sign (not a promise) that it’s potentially dead and just needed to be removed.”
Doctors over the weekend had to delay a planned surgery to repair the girl’s skull due to the abscess.
Maya suffered significant brain damage after being shot by Jesse Van Rootselaar, 18, during a mass shooting Feb. 10 in Tumbler Ridge that killed six people in a school and two others in a home.
Edmonds said the family had a meeting with medical staff about Maya possibly leaving the intensive-care unit at B.C. Children’s Hospital.
“The first time anything has been said that ISN’T emotionally debilitating,” Edmonds wrote, describing her daughter as a “fighter.”
Edmonds said in the same post that she was now able to share that about a week after Maya’s admission to hospital the family was contacted by UFC president Dana White.
White offered to pay for medical care for Maya at “one of the world’s most top tier hospitals in L.A. California” and cover accommodations for the family.
That Los Angeles hospital has an “extensive brain trauma clinic and more resources,” she wrote. “However, Maya hadn’t been stable enough to travel. Until now.”
Edmonds said a transfer to California is still tentative.
“Providing nothing serious happens between now and Monday. We may finally start looking towards a future for my girls … Stability and recovery,” she wrote.
“It feels as though the air got lighter, and Maya has some light in her eyes … hope just got a little more brighter.”
On Feb. 21, the UFC paid tribute to Maya at an event in Texas by having her name printed on part of the Octagon, the enclosed cage used for fights.