St. Louis Grad Student Detained In Russia

Trapped for months: A St. Louis graduate student is stuck in Russia.

What she thought were just souvenirs, could land her in a Russian prison.

Roxana Contreras, 29, a Chilean citizen, is studying for her Ph.D, at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. She should be there now, immersed in her potentially ground-breaking research on the impact of physics in the treatment of brain injuries.

Instead, her two-month battle to come home drags on, with friends in St. Louis now fearing the worst.

Contreras had just been to a research conference in Dresden, Germany. Her colleague from the university came back to St. Louis, Contreras went on to visit friends in Russia, where she'd studied a few years ago.

Her boyfriend, Fred Scherrer of University City, told FOX 2 she was due back in St. Louis June 20th.

"Some days she's doing very well, other days she's absolutely panicked and frantic. The state of suspended animation and not knowing, is what's most agonizing," said Dr. Sonya Bahar, Ph.D, director of the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, Contreras' thesis adviser. "Some days she can kind of laugh a little bit about it. Other days she sounds sort of hysterical, terrified."

She said Contreras has had to rent an apartment, awaiting trial. "She thought she was going to travel briefly, so she didn't take her laptop, she didn't take her work with her. There's nothing she can work on. She has no way to keep busy. She's playing her guitar alone in this apartment, waiting for word when's she going to go to trial."

She said just before Contreras was to leave Russia, she bought some old Russian money and few Soviet military medals, worth about $30 from a street vendor as souvenirs.

Contreras didn't know it was a crime to try to take them out of the country. She was stopped at the airport and held in the city of Voronezh, known as a hot-bed for Russian nationalism, about 350 miles south of Moscow.

There's still been no trial date set.

"There have been a few foreign students murdered ... so I'm very worried about this young woman living by herself in a very dangerous city. She's told me she can't go out at night because there are "Skin Heads" around her apartment. For a lot of reason, we're all very, very frightened for her safety," Bahar said.

Chilean authorities are reportedly working for her release. So is U.S. Congressman Todd Akin, (R) St. Louis County. He's repeatedly written Russian authorities asking for lenience; essentially saying this appears to be an innocent mistake; confiscating the money and medals is certainly understandable; but usually people are only detained for grave offenses.