Sunday, 29 June 2008

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Supermodel Plunges to Death in Apparent Suicide

A catwalk model dies after she jumped from her balcony.

Ruslana Korshunova found dead outside her apartment block in Manhattan

A supermodel plunged to her death Saturday afternoon by leaping from her Lower Manhattan apartment window in an apparent suicide.

Ruslana Korshunova, barely shy of her 21st birthday, apparently jumped from the balcony of her residential building in Manhattan's Financial District, police tell the New York Post.

Authorities said there appeared to be no signs of a struggle having taken place inside the 9th-floor apartment, which the green-eyed, 5'8" beauty had occupied for only two months.

The Kazakhstan-born "Russian Rapunzel," as she was known, had appeared as cover girl on editions of French Elle and Russian Vogue, as well as in ads for Marc Jacobs, DKNY, Vera Wang and Christian Dior.

"Our hearts are with her family," a spokesman for her agency, IMG (which also represents Heidi Klum and Kate Moss) told the Post.

A former boyfriend, Artem Perchenok, 24, told the paper that the two had watched the movie Ghost and that he dropped her off at home at 5 a.m. Saturday. "She was a good person," he said.

New York's Daily News suggested a lost love was the reason for Korshunova's being despondent.

Quoting poetry she'd placed on the Web, the paper reports that matters of the heart served as the central theme to all her writing.

"Do not confuse love and desire," she posted May 30. "Love is the sun, desire – only flash. Desire dazzles, and the sun gives life."