Supermodel falls to her death in Manhattan
NEW YORK: A European Vogue cover model fell to her death from her Manhattan apartment building yesterday in an apparent suicide.
Ruslana Korshunova, 20, died in a fall from a building on Water Street, in Manhattan's financial district, about 2.30pm on Saturday (4.30am yesterday AEST), local media reported, citing unnamed officials and police.
Police said the fall was under investigation. Korshunova's New York agency and a spokeswoman for medical examiners did not immediately return telephone messages.
But a bystander told The New York Post: "I heard what sounded like a gunshot or a bomb or an explosion.
"I looked down the street, and I say to the cop, "Did that person just get hit by a car?"' said an electricity company worker, who identified himself only as Patrick, 32, of Brooklyn.
The two men raced over to the scene. "Her arms were crushed," Patrick told the Post. "Her head was on the left side and blood was coming out in a pool."
Police said there were no signs of a struggle in the apartment.
The window from which she fell had a balcony, which had construction netting around it that appeared to have been cut.
Originally from the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan, the almond-eyed, flowing-haired Korshunova appeared in advertisements and on runways for such designers as Marc Jacobs, Nina Ricci and DKNY. British Vogue hailed her as "a face to be excited about" in 2005.
Her break came when modelling booker Debbie Jones noticed her while reading an in-flight magazine article about Korshunova's home town of Almaty, according to the Vogue report.
"She looked like something out of a fairytale," Jones told the magazine. "We had to find her and we searched high and low until we did."
A friend told The Post yesterday: "She's one of the sweetest, nicest people you'll ever meet.
"I'm still in shock. The world lost a great person."
The friend said Korshunova had just returned from a modeling assignment in Paris and seemed to be "on top of the world".
"There were no signs," the paper cited him as saying. "That's what's driving me crazy. I don't see one reason why she would do that."
Korshunova, who had been sending money back to her parents in Kazakhstan, was in love with the city, he added.
"People made her feel comfortable here."
Korshunova's doorman, who did not want to be identified, remembered the catwalker as "very soft-spoken".
"She always said hi and bye," he said. "She was beautiful, beautiful."
Original Source : http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23941898-2703,00.html
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