Sylvester Stallone’s half-sister dies of cancer at 48

New York: Sylvester Stallone, who lost his son Sage recently, was struck by another tragedy, when his half-sister Toni Ann Filiti died of cancer at her mother’s residence in Santa Monica, California on Sunday. She was 48.

“I was holding her in my arms. I had just washed [her] face and told her how pretty she looked, and she just fell asleep,” the New York Daily News quoted her mother Jackie as saying. “She’s too young to go, but she wasn’t feeling any pain. “What a terrible month. First Sage and now Toni. It’s hard. At least they’re together now in heaven,” she said. She said that her daughter was on heavy pain medication but had her eyes open earlier in the day. “I was talking to her about renting a place in Paris where we would go so she could get better. I believe in miracles. “But my husband is a doctor and said she was dying. A little while later he said she was gone. I stayed with her a couple hours on the bed,” she said. Filiti had been in a local hospital recently but had moved home for her final days. Jackie said she had spoken to Stallone on Sunday to deliver the sad news. “He said he can’t take any more pain. He said he’ll always be there for her son,” she added. ANI