Model Apparently Jumps to Death in Lower Manhattan

Police believe that a 20-year-old woman committed suicide by jumping out of her Water Street apartment's balcony around 2:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon. The woman was identified as Kazhakstan model Ruslana Korshunova.

Newsday reported, "It appeared she fell from the balcony of her ninth-floor apartment, police said, where a large hole was visible in construction netting hanging on the front of the 12-story building." A Con Ed worker, who had been talking to a cop at the time, told the 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?'"

Another person told the Daily News, "All I saw was something moving out of the corner of my eye, and then boom. It sounded like a bass drum when she hit the ground." No one on Water Street was hurt.

The building's doorman Mahmoud Nakeeb described Korshunova, who had modeled for DKNY, Marc Jacobs, Jill Stuart, Vera Wang, Lela Rose, and others, as "sweet" and "always smiling." He added that she moved in two months ago. A friend spoke to the Post and said the model had just returned from a job in Paris, "The world lost a great person...There were no signs. That's what's driving me crazy. I don't see one reason why she would do that."

The ME's office will determine a cause of death; per Newsday, a police source said there were no signs of a struggle and it's "unclear if anyone else was in the apartment at the time of the fall or if a suicide note was found." According to British Vogue, Korshunova was discovered in 2003, when a booker was reading an in-flight magazine feature about her hometown, "I saw her by chance and she looked like something out of a fairytale!"

As Friends Mourn, Model's Death Ruled a Suicide

The medical examiner's office determined suicide as cause of death for Ruslana Korshunova, a 20-year-old model who fell from her Water Street apartment in lower Manhattan Saturday afternoon.

Friends gathered outside the building, crying and leaving flowers. Many reports noted that there was a hole in the construction netting outside her building; Newsday reported, the DOB couldn't "confirm whether the fall caused the hole and, if so, why the netting did not prevent her death." Her current boyfriend, Mark Kaminsky, says she had moved into his Staten Island home soon after they met in March, but she kept her Manhattan apartment.

The Daily News reported Kaminsky "last saw his girlfriend about noon on Saturday, about two hours before" she died. Kaminsky said she was "doing good" and "happy" with modeling. But her ex-boyfriend Artem Perchenok (who had seen Korshunova on Friday night) told the Post, "I think she just gave up" and said she was feeling the pressures of modeling.

She previously wrote about her sadness on a Russian social networking site, things like, "I'm so lost, will I ever find myself?" But Korshunova's mother, who lives in Alamty, Kazhakstan, was shocked, telling the Post, "She's had her ups and downs but never anything that would lead to suicide. This is completely unexpected."

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