Sheila Nabb liked to travel.

Her uncle, Robert Prosser, said the 37-year-old native of Lower Sackville has travelled all over the world and worked in China for years teaching English. But that didn’t blunt the shock Prosser felt when he got a call Friday that his niece had been viciously beaten  in Mazatlán, Mexico.

“We were just horrified by it,” said Prosser, who lives in Kingston.

According to Mexican news site noroeste.com, Nabb was found severely beaten in a pool of blood in an elevator at the Hotel Riu Emerald Bay.

“Basically every bone in her face was broken,” said Prosser. “The surgeon who looked at her said it will probably be three or four weeks before she’d be stable enough to fly, to get her back home to Calgary,” Prosser said. “They’re going to have to wire the jaw shut and put plates in where her cheek bones were … a lot of reconstructive surgery.”

She has since been placed in an induced coma, and Prosser said that the early indications are that Nabb will be okay.

Nabb, who moved from Lower Sackville to Calgary two years ago, was staying at the Hotel Riu with her husband, Andrew.