SIUC student Leah Reichert has been removed from the intensive care unit and is recovering in her own room at St. Francis Medical Center after a 35-foot fall at Giant City State Park Saturday, a family member says.

Reichert, a undecided sophomore from Belleville, remains at St. Francis Medical Center in Cape Girardeau, Mo., after being flown there by helicopter Saturday. Reichert’s sister, Amy Jo, said Leah began speech and physical therapy Monday.

Reichert sustained a two-inch laceration to her head, swelling on her brain and a broken vertebrae in the middle of her back after losing her balance and falling 35 feet onto a ledge.

Advertisement

Reichert fell in an area of the park known as Devil’s Stand Table. The site is near Shelter 2 and one of the two areas of the park where rock climbing is allowed.

The sister said Reichert still mostly sleeps and says that her head hurts.

“As far as any of the details she doesn’t remember,” Amy Jo Reichert said.

Eric A. Putnam, an undecided sophomore of Chatham, who was with Reichert when she fell, said Reichert was wearing regular running shoes at the park.

Park Superintendent Robert Kristoff said there is no marked trail in the area where the group was hiking, but her roommate, Shana K. Gleason, an undecided sophomore of Auburn, said there was a trail where they were at.

Putnam said Reichert’s mother instructed him, along with the other members of the group who were with Reichert, not to answer any more questions about the incident.