Ruslana Korshunova plunges to her death in NY
I'm surprised there are not more of this type of case here..
A 20-year-old model who appeared on the covers of fashion magazines and graced international catwalks has died after apparently leaping from her ninth floor flat in New York.
Ruslana Korshunova fell from her ninth-storey apartment
Ruslana Korshunova was found dead outside her downtown Manhattan building on Saturday afternoon after eyewitnesses described seeing a body plunge from a balcony.
Police reported no sign of a struggle inside the apartment of the model from the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, who was three days shy of her 21st birthday. Friends, however, said there were no signs the model had been suicidal.
"There's no way she would have killed herself," Kira Titeneva, a friend from Korshunova's home town, told the New York Daily News. "She loved life so much."
Titeneva described Korshunova as "my best friend" and "like an angel."
Another friend told the New York Post that Korshunova, who would have earned around $5,000 (£2,500) for a catwalk show and had been sending money home to her family, was "one of the sweetest, nicest people you'll ever meet."
"I'm still in shock. The world lost a great person." He added she had just returned from a modelling job in Paris and seemed "on top of the world".
"There were no signs. That's what's driving me crazy. I don't see one reason why she would do that."
But in emotional postings on a social networking website, the 5 ft 8 in, long-haired model who appeared on the covers of French Elle and Russian Vogue and modelled for designers including Betsey Johnson and Jill Stuart, hinted at personal struggles.
"I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?" Korshunova wrote three months ago. In January, she commented: "It hurts, as if someone took a part of me, tore it out, mercilessly stomped all over and threw it out."
Korshunova's death is the latest to rock the fashion world, an industry often criticised for the pressures and demands it can place on models.
In February, the body of Katoucha Niane, the former supermodel muse of Yves Saint Laurent, was found in the Seine near Paris after an apparent suicide. Over the past two years, a number of South American models have died of suspected malnutrition, prompting international debate about eating disorders and "size zero" models.
of keeping to the size zero and always looking at their best, too much too soon I think and young people don't know how to cope with it all, child actors often have problems too.
It is always sad when someone young takes their own life, at any age really but it must be a higher percentage for the youthful.