Tamworth business owner and boxer Cody Vitalone '"faces a long and difficult road to recovery" after breaking his neck in a freak accident at his home.

Vitalone broke a C5 vertebra and "shattered a C4 vertebra" when he tripped over a baby gate and fell down stairs, his sister Bianca Butcher said.

He was taken to Tamworth hospital and then flown to Newcastle's John Hunter Hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery to remove the damaged bones and replace them with a titanium cage in his neck.

"The doctors told us just how lucky Cody was - the fractures were only millimetres away from his spinal cord, which could have left him permanently paralysed," Butcher wrote on a GoFundMe page set up for the owner of Papa Luigi's Pasta House on Peel St.

"Although we're incredibly grateful he

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