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Actress Carrie Fisher, known best for her role as Princess Leia Organa in the original Star Wars trilogy, was in critical condition on Friday after suffering a “cardiac episode” during a flight from London to Los Angeles, according to emergency and airline officials.
Fisher, 60, was rushed to UCLA Medical Center by Los Angeles Fire Department paramedics shortly after noon, after her 11-hour flight touched down at LAX.
A source who cannot discuss the incident due to unauthorization said: “in a lot of distress on the flight.”
United Airlines released a statement and said that medical personnel met Flight 935 from London on arrival after the crew reported that a passenger was unresponsive.
“Our thoughts are with our customer at this time,” the statement read.
Shortly before arrival, a pilot told the control tower that passengers that were nurses, helped to attend to an “unresponsive” passenger.
“So they’re working on her right now,” the pilot said in a public recording of the conversation on liveatc.net.
According to the LAX Police Department, officers responded to Terminal 7 around 12:15 p.m., for a call of a female passenger in cardiac arrest. On arrival, they found paramedics performing CPR on the victim, according to Officer Alicia Hernandez.
Todd Fisher, Carrie’s brother, told the Associated Press that his sister had been stabilized at the hospital. He further told news outlets:
“She is in the intensive care unit, she is being well looked after,” Todd says. “If everyone could just pray for her that would be good. The doctors are doing their thing and we don’t want to bug them. We are waiting by patiently.”
Todd says Fisher’s condition is still unknown.
“We don’t know. We hope for the best,” Todd says. “We certainly do not know her condition, that’s why she is in ICU. I’m sure everyone wants to speculate, but now is not the time for that.”
Fisher, who’s most prominent role is in Star Wars as Princess Leia, recently published an autobiography titled the “Princess Diarist,” her eighth book.
She is the daughter of famous Hollywood couple Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.
Carrie Fisher, who has written and spoken openly about her struggles in Hollywood, is considered Hollywood royalty. She took on her prickly relationship with her mother in the book-to-movie “Postcards From the Edge.” She’s also been outspoken about her mental health issues and the solution she found — radical-sounding electroshock therapy.
Since the news of Fisher’s condition broke, support and sympathy has been pouring in on social media.
Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca, tweeted “thoughts and prayers for our friend and everyone’s favorite princess right now.”
Actor Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, also took to Twitter: “as if 2016 couldn’t get any worse… sending all our love to @carrieffisher