Woman, 40, in fatal leap on East Side
AN AMBITIOUS corporate recruiter with two young children leaped to her death Monday morning from her Upper East Side home, cops said.
Police suspect that Lindsay Schwartz Jacoby, 40, took the fatal plunge from the fourth floor of her tony brick home on 86th St. and East End Ave. — steps from Gracie Mansion — and landed in the private courtyard about 10:15 a.m.
Jacoby’s father discovered her body, said neighbors who witnessed the gut-wrenching scene. “It was really harrowing,” said a neighbor who gave only his first name, Jeffrey. “He screamed and screamed. We thought he was having a heart attack.”
Her father came out of the building and asked Jeffrey and his wife to call 911. “He was clutching his heart,” he said. “It wasn’t till the police showed that we realized it was a suicide.”
Jacoby, who graduated cum laude from Union College, worked as a wealth management recruiter at Oppenheimer & Co. She joined Oppenheimer last November, after working at JPMorgan Chase and her own firm, Jacoby Staffing.
“While only with our firm for a short period, she will be greatly missed by those who worked with and knew her,” Oppenheimer CEO Bud Lowenthal said in a statement Monday. “Our most heartfelt condolences go out to her family during this difficult time.”
Her 2005 marriage to Seth David Jacoby, the CEO and founder of Frame.com, was featured in The New York Times.
The city medical examiner will determine how she died.
Jacoby and her husband owned the $4 million building, and neighbors said they had recently completed a renovation.
One neighbor said he noticed “something amiss” about Jacoby in recent weeks. “Two weeks ago there was an ambulance here,” the neighbor said. “And she was taken away.”