June 28, 2008
A stunning supermodel leaped out of her swank downtown apartment to her death in an apparent suicide today, officials said.
Striking Ruslana Korshunova, 22, jumped from her ninth floor apartment in her Water Street building, in the Financial District, just before 2:30 p.m.
"I heard what sounded like a gunshot or a bomb or an explosion," said a shocked Con Ed worker, Patrick, 32, of Brooklyn, who was talking to a cop nearby before the beauty leapt.
"I looked down the street and I say to the cop, did that person just get hit by a car?"
The officer raced over to the scene and Patrick followed.
"Her arms were crushed," he said. "Her head was on the left side and blood was coming out in a pool."
Korshunova, a striking, flaxen-haired, green-eyed beauty, was hailed as the next big thing in a profile in Vogue three years ago.
She was discovered in 2003 when a booker from London-based Models One, Debbie Jones, noticed her in a feature in a magazine aboard a flight about the model's hometown of Almaty, Kazakhstan.
"I saw her by chance and she looked like something out of a fairytale!" Jones told Vogue. "We had to find her and we searched high and low until we did! She's really incredible with feline features and timeless beauty."
Korshunova's doorman, who did not want to be named, remembered the lithe catwalker as "very soft spoken."
"She always said hi and bye," he said. "She was beautiful, beautiful."
NY POST
A stunning Russian supermodel plunged to her death from the ninth floor of her lower Manhattan high-rise Saturday, police sources and neighbors said.
Ruslana Korshunova, 20, a long-haired beauty who graced the cover of Russian Vogue, plummeted into the middle of busy Water St. in the Financial District around 2:30 p.m., according to sources and building residents.
Witnesses to the apparent suicide had no idea that the shoeless woman dressed in blue jeans and a purple tank top was a famous model but noticed her beauty right away.
"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," said Steve Metzger, 36. "She was a pretty girl."
Investigators believe Korshunova jumped from her ninth-floor apartment adjacent to a skyscraper construction site, a law enforcement source said.
"I turned around just as she was about 3 feet off the ground and then, boom, she hit," said witness Ahmed Saad, 22, who was manning a nearby halal food cart.
Often photographed with her thigh-length locks cascading around her, Korshunova was born July 2, 1987, in Almaty, Kazakhstan.
She was reportedly discovered in 2003 by Debbie Jones of Models 1, who spotted a picture of Korshunova in an in-flight magazine article about the girl's hometown.
"I saw her by chance and she looked like something out of a fairytale!" Jones told British Vogue. "We had to find her and we searched high and low until we did! She's really incredible with feline features and timeless beauty."
She was represented by the agency IMG and has modeled for Nina Ricci, Marc Jacobs and Cynthia Rowley.