Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

After 10,000-foot fall, she'll still be 'Mom'

When her parachute failed, Shayna Richardson hit the ground traveling 50 mph. Amazingly, she survived - and so did the child she is carrying.

SILOAM SPRINGS, Ark. - Shayna Richardson fell 10,000 feet when her parachutes failed to open. Dropping at a rate of about 50 mph, she landed face down in a parking lot.

She survived.

Oh, and she was pregnant.

Richardson, 21, of Joplin, Mo. was making her first solo jump in Siloam Springs in northwest Arkansas on Oct. 9 when her main chute, a brand new one, didn't open. She cut it off to allow room for the reserve, but it tangled.

Rescuers got her to a hospital in Fayetteville, where doctors, and Richardson, discovered she was pregnant. She broke her pelvis in two places, broke her right leg, lost six teeth and now has 15 steel plates in her face. She was hospitalized for 16 days.

Four surgeries and two months later, Richardson said she and the fetus are doing fine.

"Just this last week we went and saw the doctor and we've got arms, we've got legs," she said. "We've got a full face. The baby is moving around just fine. So not only did God save me but he spared this baby."

Richardson said she wouldn't have made the jump if she had known she was pregnant.

"In the hit, I "egg-shelled' my entire face," she said. "I went into the first surgery where they cut me from ear to ear and they pulled my face down and they took out all the fractured egg-shelled bones and put in steel plates."

But the experience hasn't soured her on skydiving. After the baby is born - she said it's due June 25 - she will jump again. She's planning to go in August.

Her fall was videotaped and Richardson said she was able to watch it, without qualms.

"I wanted to watch it," Richardson said. "And the whole reason I'm comfortable with watching it is because I know how it ends."

See video of the parachute fall at www.sptimes.com/links

Information from the Associated Press and KFSM-TV was used in this report.

[Last modified December 14, 2005, 00:15:15]