Bella May Culley’s grandad says ‘she’s not daft’ as she faces 20 years in jail
Bella May Culley is facing drug smuggling charges overseas after being arrested at Tbilisi International Airport
The grandad of a teenager facing drug smuggling charges overseas said she is “not an international drug trafficker”.
Bella May Culley, 18, could be looking at up to 20 years or even life in prison after allegedly being caught with as much as 14kg of cannabis in Georgia, according to the country’s officials. She is alleged to have brought the drug in to the Eastern European nation, where she was apprehended at Tbilisi International Airport.
However, prior to this, she had been the focus of a large-scale international search after being reported missing while believed to be on holiday in Thailand. The 18-year-old’s grandad, William Culley, has now spoken out over his fear that he might never be reunited with his “intelligent” granddaughter.
Mr Culley, 80, told how the family finds themselves in the dark about how Bella came to be in Georgia but believes that she had “obviously” been taken advantage of.
From his residence in Billingham, in the North East, Mr Culley 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, the MEN reports.
“Can she even tell them who’s given her the drugs to take over? I bet she doesn’t. These people keep out of the way. It’s all just very strange and at the moment we just don’t have any answers. We don’t know what to think.”
Mr Culley told of his son Neil’s journey from his home in Vietnam to Georgia to support daughter Bella. Neil’s sister Kerrie was set to travel to Thailand to assist in finding Bella but learned at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam that her niece was instead being held 3,000 miles away in Georgia.
He described his granddaughter as “intelligent” and “not daft”, insisting she wouldn’t have knowingly got involved with drugs. Mr Culley shared: “She was just going on holiday and then we never heard from her. We feared the worst because nobody knew where she was.
“Kerrie called me last night and said she had been found. I said, ‘how can you have found her? You’re in Schiphol’. And she said ‘we found her, she’s in jail’.
“I said, ‘in jail? what’s she doing in jail? And then she said, ‘drugs’. I couldn’t believe it. Who the hell has she been with? She was on holiday with some friends, doing what 18-year-olds do – drinking and dancing. They must have met somebody who’s taken advantage of her.”
Mr Culley spoke of his granddaughter as a typical 18-year-old living with her brother and mum in council housing in Billingham. Having recently finished a college course in Middlesbrough, she was planning to start a career in nursing.
Mr Culley added: “She’s not daft, she’s an intelligent girl. Why has she done it? Has someone dangled money in front of her? We just don’t know what has gone on until we get out there and talk to her. We are just hoping that somebody can do something. She must be terrified.”
This week, Georgia’s Interior Ministry declared in a statement that they “envision up to 20 years – or life imprisonment” for the alleged crime committed by Ms Culley. Awaiting trial, she has been detained in jail, with local reports asserting that she presents a flight risk following the denial of her bail application by a judge.
