A bitter contest between two women competing for a seat on a Florida school board has spiraled into a mudslinging campaign featuring allegations involving the Ku Klux Klan, controversial influencers, drag shows and even questions about where one candidate lives.

What was expected to be a low-key election focused on classrooms, teachers and school budgets has instead become a political soap opera. Lawyers, family properties and even a 10-year-old boy have been pulled into the increasingly hostile race.

At the heart of the dispute are Brittany Lyssy, an attorney and former president of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans, and Daniela Simic, a longtime educator who previously worked for Hillsborough County schools.

The candidates are battling for the District 2 seat on the Hillsborough County School Board, a formally nonpartisan position that has become deeply entangled in partisan politics.

Both women say they would prefer to focus on children’s education. Yet the campaign has increasingly been overshadowed by intensely personal allegations playing out in public.

For Lyssy, the controversy centers partly on her living arrangements. Questions arose over whether the married mother of two truly resides in the district she wants to represent after property records linked her family to homes outside Hillsborough County.

Her husband, Doug Lyssy, is registered to vote in neighboring Manatee County, where the couple owns a property in Longboat Key.

After that home was damaged by Hurricane Helene, the family moved into a smaller downtown Tampa property: a 684-square-foot, one-bedroom condominium.

The compact condominium, which her husband has owned since 2016, has fueled speculation among critics who question whether a family of four actually lives there.

Property records show that the couple bought a two-bedroom home in Longboat Key in 2025.

Lyssy says the Longboat Key purchase was an investment and maintains that the Tampa condominium remains her family’s home.

She has also said the speculation has produced troubling consequences, including alleged late-night visits by people who showed up at the condominium.

“I have resided in District 2 and continue to reside in District 2,” she told the Tampa Bay Times this week.

Lyssy is registered to vote in Hillsborough County and lists the Tampa address on her campaign paperwork.

Election officials say they do not independently verify the residency details submitted by candidates.

The dispute over her residence, however, was only the first flashpoint in the race.

Lyssy has also faced questions about a 2025 social media invitation from the Tampa Bay Young Republicans to controversial brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate.

The influencers had been arrested and were awaiting trial on rape and human trafficking charges when the organization publicly invited them to speak.

Lyssy says she was no longer president when the invitation appeared and withdrew her membership following the post.

Her opponent, meanwhile, has found herself at the center of an altogether different barrage of allegations.

One particularly explosive campaign mailer accused Simic of pursuing a ‘radical agenda’ and being ‘endorsed by radical extremists’ with connections to the Ku Klux Klan.

The allegation stemmed from an endorsement by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has itself faced accusations from the Justice Department concerning alleged funding of the KKK.

DISCOVER MORE: Bend, Oregon, School Shooting Victims: What We Know So Far

Those allegations against the organization have been dismissed by others as baseless, and the mailer’s claims do not establish that Simic has any connection to the Klan.

The same literature also accused Simic of supporting ‘boys in girls’ sports and bathrooms’ and being ‘anti-parental rights.’

Simic has also received backing from Equality Florida Action, an LGBTQ advocacy organization.

Another advertisement attacked her professional record, alleging that school grades declined in Duval and Hillsborough counties during her time as an administrator.

That advertisement was financed by Leading For Our Future, a political action committee chaired by William S. Jones, who also chairs hundreds of right-leaning political committees across Florida.

Then things got even more personal.

In September, unidentified callers began contacting voters with questions about whether damaging allegations against Simic would influence their vote.

Among the claims was that she had taken her ‘school-age child’ to a drag performance. Simic, whose son is just 10, was horrified.

She denied the allegation and said involving her child had crossed a line.

Lyssy, for her part, insists neither she nor her campaign organized or commissioned the telephone polling.

Despite the onslaught, Simic says she refuses to retaliate with similarly personal attacks.

‘I have had several different people tell me that I need to attack back,’ she said. ‘But I’m not going to do that because if it takes going negative to win this campaign, then it’s not worth winning.

‘What I am trying to teach my son is to be a good man, and what I’m asking the voters is to make me a leader of their children. That to me is more important than anything,’ she added.

Simic has also defended her career in education, arguing that critics have cherry-picked school performance figures while ignoring improvements achieved during her tenure.

‘When I went into districts, they were struggling. When I left, they were better,’ she said.

Lyssy has faced another potentially embarrassing distraction after screenshots circulated online suggesting she was not in good standing with the Florida Bar.

She dismissed the matter as an administrative filing problem that the professional organization ‘promptly corrected.’

‘I believe Hillsborough County families deserve a School Board election focused on the issues that directly impact our children and their education,’ Lyssy said. ‘I believe candidates should be evaluated on their qualifications, ideas and commitment to serving our students.’

Behind the personal fireworks lies a surprisingly expensive political contest.

Lyssy has raised more than $99,000, while Simic has collected upwards of $79,000.

By comparison, two candidates competing in another Hillsborough school board runoff have raised approximately $80,000 between them.

Lyssy is campaigning on financial accountability and rebuilding confidence in public schools, while Simic is emphasizing teacher retention, access to education and declining enrollment.

The winner will replace outgoing board member Stacy Hahn, who is running for the County Commission. 

Both candidates have been contacted by the Daily Mail for comment.  

From an early age, William Chapman dreamed of becoming famous. Charming, gifted, intelligent and determined, he seemed to possess everything needed to build a successful acting career.

By the time he was ten, William had already secured small roles in several BBC and ITV productions. For a while, his path appeared to mirror that of Eddie Redmayne and James Corden, the Jackie Palmer Stage School’s best-known former pupils.

His former teacher at the High Wycombe stage school remembers him as a “vibrant, talented and popular” child from a “lovely family” — a boy with all the qualities that could have made him a household name.

Tragically, that dream of fame did come true, but under the most devastating circumstances imaginable.

Today, William’s name is known internationally as that of the 24-year-old who, during a mental health crisis, entered a tiger enclosure at Yorkshire Wildlife Park near Doncaster and was fatally mauled.

In the aftermath, his bereaved family have also been forced to confront the cruelest side of online culture.

Videos showing William’s final moments were shared online alongside vile jokes and memes, including one that was reportedly created by then-President of the United States Donald Trump.

As they grieve, his relatives are trying to understand how the tragedy unfolded and whether mental health services played any part in what happened.

The news of William’s death deeply affected his former drama teacher.

Marylyn Phillips, 76, taught William for more than ten years. Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail this week, she said: “It was very difficult when I heard the news. It is just so sad when someone is young, talented and has everything going for them.

“It is heartbreaking enough when they leave the school, let alone something like this. They are a lovely family and they are devastated.

“They were always very, very nice and never pushy at all. Whatever their children needed, they provided. If William needed to be taken somewhere, they would make sure he got there.

“They were genuinely lovely, honourable people. That is what makes it so sad. It is incredibly difficult.”

The events of the previous Saturday have been widely reported. William was on a long footbridge overlooking the tiger enclosure, where Altai — a 200kg Amur tiger that arrived at the wildlife park last year — was resting on a wooden platform.

He reportedly asked a stranger among the visitors to take a photograph of him with the tiger visible behind him.

Only minutes later, onlookers watched in horror as he “nonchalantly” climbed into the enclosure and was attacked. Although emergency crews reached the scene quickly, William’s injuries were fatal and he died there.

During the opening of his inquest this week, William’s family questioned the support he received from mental health services in Doncaster. He had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, experienced episodes of psychosis, and was living and working in the area as a self-employed online trader.

It is not the first time questions have been raised about Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Trust, which has been pulled up on several failings in recent years, including within its mental health department. 

Questions are also being asked about the role William’s online gaming habit might have played in his declining mental state. 

Like many young men his age, he was an active gamer. Specifically, he appeared to be a big fan of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, a fantasy game that sees players armed with crossbows and axes, slaying monsters and wild predators, such as large sabre cats.

Could William have been living out a fantasy, or become caught between the blurred lines of his online and real worlds?

A chilling thought for everyone – most of all for those who loved and cared for him. For William was loved, deeply. One of four, he was born in Chichester, West Sussex, into a creative family.

His mother, Virginia Burges, 56, is a published author and violinist. His sisters are also musically talented.

It is unclear what, if any, relationship William had with his biological father Gary Chapman, the owner of a letting agents in Chichester where he lives with his second wife.

William spent most of his childhood living with his mother, stepfather and siblings in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, where, on their relocation 17 years ago, his mother signed him up for stage school.

She’d often share updates on William’s acting career on social media, posting pictures of him studying scripts on the train to London or beaming at auditions alongside his sisters.

Aged seven, William landed a role on ITV’s comedy drama series May Contain Nuts alongside Harry Potter star Shirley Henderson.

Three years later he landed another role playing a young Edward Jenner in the BBC series True Stories.

‘He was very talented and very good, so this came across in all his auditions,’ Mrs Phillips remembers.

‘He might have been fighting against everyone else for roles, but he always seemed to come out on top.

‘He cared about what he did. If I gave him a script, it would be learned by the next time I saw him.

‘We always stayed in touch and our agency represented him for a time, but then he went on to college.’

As William entered his later teenage years his loved ones started to notice a marked change in his behaviour. He began suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a mental health issue known to co-occur with schizophrenia.

At 15, he then stopped going to his lessons at stage school and Ms Burges worried that her boy was slowly disappearing. 

‘When my younger son, now 15, hit his early teens, my lovely, polite, happy and kind boy transformed into a being unrecognisable to me,’ she wrote in November 2017, on one of her parenting blogs on the ‘cure for troubled teenagers’. 

FIND OUT MORE: The American Story of the Oyster Pail Chinese Takeout Box

‘It must have been hard, he had all that testosterone circulating round his still relatively childlike body and it made him angsty, aggressive and confused. 

‘At this time his OCD became a real problem and he stopped going to his extra-curricular dance and drama. I was worried. I didn’t want him to get stuck into a gaming obsession.’ 

For a while, with the help of attending martial arts lessons at the local leisure centre, William slowly started to re-emerge. 

By the time he was studying for GCSEs, he’d started travelling, going away with friends to Greece and on a school trip to Uganda. He made a return to stage school and his academic work was soon back on track. 

His mother was so proud and relieved that she shared her joy on social media. 

‘I am in awe of his work ethic. William is a self-starter, has a healthy self-esteem and is well on his way to building a bright future,’ she wrote. 

Those hopeful words, penned almost a decade ago, are painfully poignant now.

What happened in the years between this young man finishing his GCSEs, starting college locally to study drama, and moving to Doncaster are unclear.

Yet his family have insisted that while he was a patient under the care of mental health services in Doncaster, he was ‘highly functioning and independent with no care requirements’.

One neighbour, who lived across from William in a city centre block of flats, told the Daily Mail: ‘He was living there a long time. He was a lovely, lovely man.

‘He was absolutely harmless but he would struggle to speak to more than two people. He was very shy when I first got to know him but he soon opened up and was always polite and well-spoken.

‘For the past six months or so, he became very approachable and friendly. I usually saw him on a daily basis and I probably saw him about a week before he died. He did not seem his regular self when I last saw him.’

Just 24 hours before his death, William shared a number of startling pictures. These included two topless selfies from a gym, a picture of Sheffield Grand Mosque and an image from inside his Doncaster flat. 

He then went on to share a picture of a helmet used by warriors in Ancient Greece on his pillow and a picture of a model SAS soldier brandishing the Ugandan flag. 

Most concerningly, however, was an image of William sitting with a vacant stare, with an arrow in his mouth, holding a large crossbow in one hand and a copy of the Bible in the other. 

It is an undoubtedly troubling image, yet in the background, sat on the shelf, is a card written to a much-loved grandson – a heartbreaking reminder of how loved William was. 

Hours after posting this disturbing image, he travelled from his flat to the wildlife park where witnesses would later say they saw him dancing with headphones on as he walked through the car park. 

He continued to walk through the zoo until he reached the tiger enclosure where he was also seen dancing on the bridge before scaling the fence and dropping to the ground. 

In the moments that followed, witnesses described William dropping down on all fours, ‘praying and bowing down’ to the tiger, as people shouted at him to come back.

‘It looked like a performance,’ one zoo-goer, Anthony Hunt, 22, said later. ‘He got down where everyone could see him in the main viewing area.

‘He had his arms wide open like he was saying: ‘Come here, tiger. Kill me’. Then the tiger came and started to attack him.

‘He started to fight back and screamed. It was like he was just detached from reality.’

In the days that followed, the internet was flooded with hundreds of harmful AI-generated videos of William’s final moments, which his family have called ‘deeply offensive media’. 

Yet even after the family called for an end to the painful videos, US President Donald Trump proceeded to share an AI video making light of the man’s death, which was dubbed ‘appallingly tasteless’.

Former neighbour Kim Bradley, told the Daily Mail: ‘William’s mother is a very good friend of mine, they are a lovely family. 

‘It’s absolutely awful how people with mental health problems are treated generally. It’s an awful situation. The whole energy of it is really awful.’

On Thursday, an inquest into William’s death was opened at Doncaster Coroners Court, with the full hearing expected to take place in March next year.

The inquest heard that William had a history of mental illness and a diagnosis of schizophrenia, as well as sometimes suffering from psychosis.

Coroner’s officer Caitlin Brookes said that his family had expressed ‘a number of concerns’ about the care William had received while living in Doncaster under Rotherham, Doncaster and South Humber NHS Trust.

The healthcare service has since launched an investigation into William’s death, yet it is not the first time it has come under fire for its mental health service provisions. 

Only two years ago, Cheswold Park mental health hospital in Doncaster was pulled out of special measures and was told by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) its overall rating remained inadequate.

Meanwhile, a survey from Rotherham Healthwatch in 2024 found 70 per cent of respondents rated the crisis service ‘unhelpful’, while half said that staff were not ‘caring, compassionate or understanding’.

Despite this, the trust has been pushing to improve its provisions for mental health, with Clerkenwell Health, an NHS research facility in Doncaster, being at the forefront of trialling the use of psychedelics to treat depression.

The specific concerns William’s family had over his care remain vague yet they remain ‘hopeful that the relevant authorities will do their utmost to get to the bottom of why our amazing son did what he did’.

In a statement released earlier this week, his loved ones said: ‘William was a bright, warm and engaging young man whom his family dearly loved – and William loved them back.

‘Sadly, William suffered from significant mental illness over a number of years and was consequently prescribed strong medicine.

‘It will be for the coroner to decide what played a part in his death. We would ask everybody to respect this process.’

A health and safety inquiry into the zoo will also be carried out by the City of Doncaster Council over the coming weeks.

And while Yorkshire Wildlife Park reopened its doors on Friday, including to the Land of the Tigers exhibit, William’s family are left picking up the pieces of a young life that had held so much promise. 

A couple who founded the country’s leading private sixth-form college used the institution as a personal “piggy bank” to finance a luxury lifestyle that included Rolex watches and grand pianos, a court has heard.

Yasmin Sarwar, 48, who styled herself a “tiger mum”, and her husband Nadeem, 50, established Cardiff Sixth Form College as a charity before allegedly siphoning more than £5 million in parents’ tuition fees.

Jurors were shown details of a series of payments recorded as “expenses”, which the prosecution says were used to fund the Sarwars’ extravagant spending.

In December 2013, a £30,000 yellow-gold Rolex was purchased from Watches of Switzerland at Cardiff’s St David’s shopping centre.

Mrs Sarwar, a director of the charity, then took the newly purchased watch to nearby jeweller Pravins while looking for a pair of earrings.

A shop assistant described her as appearing at ease in the boutique and “very knowledgeable about fine, high-end jewellery”.

The jury heard that Mrs Sarwar showed the assistant the Rolex and said she had secured a “good discount” on the watch.

She then told the assistant that she could obtain the same discount.

The court was also told that the Sarwars bought platinum and diamond earrings costing £23,000.

In February 2014, they purchased two grand pianos from Gardeners Pianos in Cardiff. A £2,688 Kawai piano was later delivered to the college.

The second piano, a £13,312 Kawai, was instead delivered to the Sarwar family’s home in the affluent Cyncoed area of Cardiff.

The prosecution alleges that Mrs Sarwar was a “wilful, intelligent and manipulative woman” who became a “willing participant in fraudulent activity”.

Prosecutors further claim that, after the Sarwars’ relationship “went sour”, she was prepared to establish sham companies in order to divert “huge sums of money from her husband”.

Prosecutor Mark Cotter KC said Mrs Sarwar began by tutoring A-level students before founding Cardiff Sixth Form College, which went on to become a “top performing” institution with international recognition.

The couple registered the college as a charity and then allegedly took millions of pounds to purchase properties and support what the prosecution described as a “lavish lifestyle”.

Mr Cotter told the court: “Yasmin Sarwar and her then husband treated the college as their own personal piggy bank.

“They raided the funds generated by the college to pay for their own lavish lifestyles and, in doing so, defrauded the charity.”

‘So relentless and widespread was their assault on the charitable funds that it proved impossible for the accountants retained by the college, to produce proper audited accounts.’ 

Merthyr Tydfil Crown Court heard the couple then hired Ragu Sivapalan, 41, as a ‘new, less rigorous accountant’ who took what they said at ‘face value’ to report false information. 

Mr Cotter said the college first welcomed fee-paying international students in 2009 and began successfully marketing internationally. 

He said: ‘It became one of the top performing sixth form colleges in the country with international recognition.’ 

The court heard the couple, both originally from Malaysia, also recruited family members to sit as trustees on the school board. 

Mr Cotter said: ‘Yasmin Sarwar was a wilful, intelligent and manipulative woman who was a willing participant in the fraudulent activity taking place in the college. 

‘So committed was she to the draining of college money into her own pocket, she was prepared to set up sham companies to divert huge sums of money away from her husband, after their relationship went sour, and overseas.’ 

The court heard Mrs Sarwar set up two companies called Ayass Ltd and Ayass Guardianship Ltd to allegedly run ‘welfare programmes’ for students at the school. 

The companies were set up in the lead up to the divorce petition between the couple in 2014 before ‘vast sums of money’ were sent to Malaysia and ‘never seen again.’ 

The court heard the companies were allegedly running schemes including a summer school and the Goodwill Ambassadors Programme – known as GAP – paid for by students. 

But it was the college providing the services while Yasmin’s Sarwar’s companies were being paid huge sums. 

EXPLORE MORE: Hamas Terrorists Turning on Each Other – NewsFinale

Mr Cotter said: ‘The two ‘Ayass’ companies set up by Yasmin were used by her as a fraudulent mechanism to siphon off huge sums of money from the charitable company and into her own hands and away from Nadeem as, by this stage, their relationship had turned sour.’ 

The court heard the finances were questioned after the college employed new Head of Pastoral Services Gareth Collier in September 2015.

Mr Collier, who identified a ‘culture of fear,’ became suspicious about the college’s finances after approaching Nadeem Sarwar about expenses for an overseas trip.

Mr Cotter said: ‘Following an overseas trip Mr Collier approached Nadeem with regards his expenses incurred on the trip and was told to ‘take what he needed’ from a brown paper bag filled with cash.

‘Mr Collier also noticed bank statements in Nadeem’s office which recorded £25,000 payments with the reference ‘Naz Agents Commission’.’

The court heard Mr Collier approached Yasmin Sarwar to raise his concerns before she immediately tried to blame her husband for ‘taking money out of the college.’

Mr Cotter said: ‘The response of Yasmin, in openly blaming Nadeem when confronted, is consistent with her attitude to the allegations in this trial – where she continues to blame Nadeem for everything and denies any responsibility herself.’

The court heard the college came under further scrutiny when it was late submitting financial statements for the year ending August 2014.

Staff were told the Charity Commission would be carrying out a visit to inspect their books and records in 2016.

But Mrs Sarwar then told finance assistant Hindia Ahmed to take two weeks annual leave during their inspection.

Mr Cotter said: ‘Hindia Ahmed’s role meant she would have been of assistance to the Charity Commission in carrying out their inspection.

‘However, she had previously questioned Yasmin, Nadeem and Ragu Sivapalan as to £1.8m of funds that appeared to her to be missing from the college bank accounts.’

The court heard Yasmin later called for Hindia Ahmed to sign a ‘non-disclosure agreement’ which she referred to as a ‘gagging order’ in an attempt to silence her.

The court heard the Sarwars set up a board of 11 trustees including respected teacher John Price-Thomas, his wife Carol and later their son Huw.

But four of the other trustees were related to the Sarwars including Nadeem Sarwar’s sister, his cousins and Yasmin Sarwar’s sister.

Mr Cotter said ‘financial decisions were not being made by the trustees’ but were instead being made by the Sarwars ‘including the setting of their very substantial salaries.’

Mr Cotter said trustees John and Carol Price-Thomas were ‘well meaning’ but did not ‘fully grasp their responsibilities’ or hold the Sarwars to account.

The court heard the Sarwars announced they wanted to convert the college into a private business in 2013 and would no longer need trustees.

Mr Price-Thomas, his wife and son resigned to allow for the change from charitable status – but the private business was never set up and new trustees were recruited.

Mr Cotter said the Sarwars asked school mum Nabeela Sheik to be a trustee even though they were told she had ‘poor spoken English and could not read or write well in English either.’

The court heard Mrs Sarwar said she was have to ‘just sit there’ when she attended the meetings.

Mr Cotter said: ‘Her first language is Urdu and she speaks little English. She had no understanding of what she was being asked to do as a trustee.

‘She attended a few meetings during her two years as a trustee, understood nothing of what was being spoken about and was never asked to vote on anything.’

The court heard minutes from trustees meetings were ‘fabricated’ when referring to Yasmin and Nadeem Sarwar’s salaries, the process of replacing trustees and annual reports and financial statements.

Mr Cotter said investigators found Yasmin Sarwar transferred over £1.1m of college money to her mother’s account in Malaysia.

Mr Cotter said Mrs Sarwar also bought a £1.1m house in Cardiff, falsely made claims for rent on other properties she claimed were being used by the college and stole money to carry out renovations.

Accountant Sivapalan, of Penylan, Cardiff, pleaded guilty to causing an auditor’s report on a company’s annual accounts to include misleading, false or deceptive information between January 2013 and July 2016.

Nadeem Sarwar admitted stealing £5m from Cardiff Sixth Form College between 19 February 2008 and 31 October 2016. 

Yasmin Sarwar, 48, of Cyncoed, Cardiff, denies nine theft and fraud charges between 2008 and 2016 totalling more than £5m. 

The college had more than 300 students on its register and attracts children from all around the world, including Albania and China. 

The trial, due to last ten weeks, continues. 

At 34, Adelaide carpenter Scott Kingston Mayne had no warning that an ordinary day was about to become a fight for survival.

He had recently completed another AFL season and was looking ahead to the future with his girlfriend, Lara, 29. The couple were planning to buy their first home and start a family.

Instead, on the morning of August 18, a routine job at a marina in Brunswick Heads, northern NSW, was interrupted by sudden, agonising pain in Scott’s jaw—the first sign of a medical crisis that would leave him fighting for his life.

Within hours, he would be transferred between two hospitals and placed in an induced coma as surgeons carried out an extraordinary 18-hour operation. Lara and Scott’s family were left waiting anxiously for news.

More than three weeks on, Scott is only beginning to understand what happened. He effectively lost two weeks of his life and woke to learn how close his seemingly normal workday had come to ending in tragedy.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Lara said there had been no indication that her partner was about to become critically ill when he left for work that morning.

Scott was digging up pavers at the job site when, at about 9am, he was struck by intense pain in his jaw.

The pain soon spread into his chest, then moved through his back towards his stomach. Frightened, Scott called Lara and asked what he should do.

Lara, a nurse and midwife, immediately recognised that the symptoms might signal something serious and told him not to take any risks.

‘I had a bit of an inkling that it was something really bad. He was freaking out,’ she recalled.

By remarkable coincidence, Scott was working with his colleague Matt that morning. He usually worked alone and often travelled to jobs in rural areas of the state.

Lara instructed him to call an ambulance, then got into her car and drove to Brunswick Heads, arriving soon after paramedics.

Scott was taken to Tweed Hospital, where blood tests and CT scans revealed a severe aortic dissection—a tear in the body’s main artery.

The gravity of the diagnosis became clear to Lara almost immediately. After Scott’s scan, the radiologist emerged and told her it was a ‘full dissection’.

Because she had cared for patients with similar conditions as a nurse, Lara understood how dangerous the situation could be.

‘I know exactly what that means,’ she said.

‘I’ve looked after patients that have been in that situation. I was like, “How the hell is this our life?”‘

What made the diagnosis even harder to comprehend was that Scott had appeared to be the picture of health before that morning.

Lara described him as someone who was constantly active, saying he had recently completed another season of AFL and was rarely ever sitting still.

Scott could not recall experiencing any concerning symptoms in the preceding months either, and there is no known family history of the condition.

With time critical, he was transferred by ambulance from Tweed Hospital to Gold Coast University Hospital, where he was taken straight into surgery.

He remained conscious and able to talk throughout the transfer and until doctors placed him into an induced coma, before surgeons began an extraordinary operation that would ultimately last 18 hours.

ALSO READ: Trump DOJ Urges Judge Cannon to Reject FBI Agents’ “Fear-Mongering”

The couple had moved from Adelaide to Lennox Head almost two years earlier and had no family living nearby, leaving Lara to make a series of difficult phone calls to Scott’s loved ones as he was being rushed to the Gold Coast.

Afterwards, Scott needed to remain on a bypass machine for his heart before he spent 10 days in an induced coma as his body began the huge task of recovering.

Despite the enormity of what he has endured, Lara said Scott is now ‘absolutely smashing goals’ in his recovery, although the previously energetic carpenter remains significantly weaker after spending so long confined to a hospital bed.

The weakness has been particularly frustrating because he is left-handed and, as a carpenter, was accustomed to spending his days working with his hands.

His voice has also been affected, with Lara explaining that the nature of the surgery can impact the nerve leading to the vocal cords, while the breathing tube used during his treatment has also left the area swollen.

However, she said his voice is gradually becoming stronger and his recovery continues to move in the right direction each day.

While it remains difficult to know exactly how long Scott’s rehabilitation will take, doctor’s have estimated it could be between six months and a year before he is able to return to full working function.

‘It will probably just be a long road of getting him healthy and fit again,’ she said.

‘Slowly but surely.’

‘We’re extremely lucky and count our lucky stars every day that he’s here and that he’s getting better.’

Amid the hospital stays, rehabilitation and uncertainty, however, there have already been small moments that have made life feel a little more normal. 

After spending three weeks apart, Scott was recently reunited with the couple’s dog when she was allowed to visit him in hospital, something Lara described as a ‘very lovely’ moment.

And while their plans to return to Adelaide may have been unexpectedly delayed, Lara remains grateful that they still have the opportunity to make them happen. 

You can donate to Scott’s GoFundMe here.