Witness: Atlanta kickboxer's emergency transport delayed

By Chelsea Cook

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The Atlanta woman who died Tuesday after she was knocked unconscious during an amateur kickboxing tournament in Orlando wasn't taken to a hospital for an hour, a kickboxing coach at the event said.

The Orange County Sheriff's Office said Tuesday that Adrienne Simmons, 34, of Midtown, was participating in the International Kickboxing Match held at an Orlando hotel on Sunday. The tournament is sponsored by the International Kickboxing Federation.

During the final round of a three-round fight, she received a left hook that knocked her unconscious. Simmons and her opponent were practicing Muy Thai kickboxing, which allows for the use of knees and elbows, but requires women to wear head pads.

A sheriff's office spokeswoman says the death is considered an accident.

Eric Haycraft, the coach of Simmons' opponent, Lindsay Scheer, talked to the AJC about the fight.

"Adrienne jabbed, Lindsay counter jabbed. Adrienne went down for an eight-count. That was kind of unusual because a jab isn't too hard of a hit," Haycraft said. "A minute later, she got a standing eight-count, where the ref checked her out see if she was OK."

The referee deemed Simmons ready.

"The third round starts, and it was a lot of the same. Adrienne seriously started slowing down," Haycraft said. "Then, Lindsay threw a couple of the same combinations: jab with the right hand, left hook. That left hook knocked [Simmons] out. She fell back cold."

The fight was stopped immediately and Scheer was declared the winner.

Haycraft said a doctor he had met many times before, who was an expert on head injuries and a neurosurgeon, rushed to Simmons. She regained consciousness and even sat up to say she felt she was going to be sick.

"We thought it was a normal KO," Haycraft said. "When we go in the back, we saw things were worse. Locker rooms were sealed off. They made an announcement over the [public address] for the Marriott to call 911."

Haycraft said there was no ambulance on-call at the fight.

"I've been a fighter, coach and trainer in this business for 20 years, and there is always an ambulance at every fight, professional or amateur," Haycraft said.

Florida's WFTV reported that Steve Fossom, president of IKF, which organized the fight, told the news station that he arranged for an ambulance from a nearby fire station to be on-call, but it was not present at the fight.

E-mails and calls to Fossom from the AJC were not immediately returned.

According to Haycraft and the victim's boyfriend, Chike Ajuda, it took an hour to get Simmons to a hospital. Although they both said she was eventually airlifted from the hotel, an Orlando Regional Medical Center spokeswoman said Simmons arrived by ground transportation.

As of 8:20 p.m. Orange County Fire and Rescue had not returned voice messages and e-mail left by the AJC.

"There was no paramedics or ambulance on site, which there should be at any fight. This was a huge fight with 200 people -- a huge capacity for something to go wrong of this nature," Ajuda told WFTV. "There was no one on site, so it took, from what I understand, 30 minutes before she was placed on gurney and ready for transport... So it was about an hour before she was prepped for surgery."

Ajuda is also a Muay Thai kickboxer from Atlanta. He trains at Bangkok Boxing on Peachtree Industrial.

"Time is always a critical factor in these types of injuries," he said.

Simmons was taken to the Orlando hospital, where she was treated for two days before dying.

Nick Dekay, owner of Unit 2 Fitness in Midtown, said Simmons trained and worked as an instructor at the gym about a year ago.

"She was a very talented martial artist. She was very stubborn, and wouldn’t give up no matter what," Dekay told the AJC. "Just as a person, she was really nice to be around, really smart, a good person to have here helping out and she helped a lot of women here."

Simmons' was also pursuing her master of arts in teaching degree at Emory University, said Marla Watt, a colleague at Emory.

"She was very passionate about teaching in an underprivileged, urban setting," Watt said in an e-mail to the AJC.  "It is a great loss to us, her Emory Cohort, and to her future students that she will not get to do that."

But her true passion was Muy Thai.

"She wanted to fight because she wanted to feel stronger," Ajudua told WFTV. "Because in the past, she didn't feel as strong as she wanted to."

Check back to ajc.com for updates.

-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.