Horror as 'sleepwalking' mum-of-two who fell from balcony not found until morning

A British woman fell from her Airbnb balcony in Paris. The mum-of-two is now facing a difficult and long path to recovery. Raina Heverin, 42, was found the next morning severely injured in the courtyard of the building by her horrified brother. She was then rushed to hospital in a serious condition. She fell from the balcony of the room where she was staying during a weekend away on April 26 this year.

Raina, from Mossley Hill, suffered multiple injuries including a broken arm, a broken hip, and lesions on her brain stem affecting her movement and speech. She remained in a coma in a French hospital for almost a month, finally waking on May 17.

Her husband Michael, 45, said: "We think she had some kind of nightmare or sleep-walked, but she fell from the second floor balcony. She'd spent the day shopping and bought a new pair of running trainers. The following morning when her brother woke up. He went into her room because they had a day of sightseeing planned. She wasn't in, and he thought she must have got up early and gone for a run, which wouldn't have been unusual at all for her. But then he saw her trainers by the door."

It is believed Raina may have been sleepwalking when the incident happened, the Liverpool Echo reports. Michael flew to Paris to see his wife upon hearing the terrible news. He said Raina was in hospital for two months and returned on June 11. She was then in Whiston Hospital for a week, and subsequently transferred to Broadgreen, where she's still now.

He said: "She's awake and has been out of her coma since May 17. Now she's undergoing intense rehab. A lot of the neurological pathways have been severed. She had three lesions on her brain stem, one causing loss of sensation on the right side of her body, one affecting her left side, and one affecting her speech. She's learning how to walk again, learning how to talk again. All those basic skills we use on a daily basis, she has to relearn all of that.

"She can talk and she can string a sentence together, but she doesn't sound like herself. She gets tired quickly. Talking can be exhausting for her. It will take years for her to get close to who she was physically.

"It's been really hard for her because she's such an active, outgoing, bubbly, extroverted person who is constantly on the go. She was in the gym every single day. She's gone from being a force of nature in Liverpool, an incredibly successful mum-of-two, and all of a sudden it's ground to a halt and she's struggling to come to terms with that.

She's still cognitively herself, but her ability to function at the level she did previously is gone, which is very hard for her to take. It's very emotional and very frustrating and it's going to be a very long journey ahead."

Raina, a recruiter who co-founded the SupplyWell teaching agency with her husband, hopes to secure a place at Oak Vale Gardens, a specialist brain injury rehabilitation centre in Broadgreen. Her friend Rachel Bryan set up an online fundraiser to help Raina.