An elderly woman was reportedly decapitated as she fell to her death from a New York City apartment building this weekend.
On Saturday, Oct. 12, an 81-year-old woman fell from an Upper East Side high-rise building on East 89th Street, an NYPD DCPI spokesperson confirmed to PEOPLE. Police told the New York Post that the woman jumped from the building’s 28th floor.
Police responded to the incident at around 3:35 p.m., and investigators at the scene found that the woman had “injuries indicative of falling from an elevated position,” the spokesperson told PEOPLE. First responders later pronounced the woman dead at the scene, and no details about whether or not the woman fell accidentally were given.
“The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death,” the spokesperson said, noting that the woman’s identity is being withheld while police notify her family. “The investigation remains ongoing at this time.”
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Witnesses at the scene told the New York Post that the woman struck a fence on the way down, which decapitated her and severed her arm.
“I pulled up just as she was lying there, she had no head,” a resident of the Manhattan apartment building told the outlet on Saturday. “The head and the arm were clean cut off on the other side. They ended up on the terrace.”
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Another witness, 23, told the outlet that the woman’s clothes were stuck on a fence nearby, which had been bent from the impact.
“Everyone started rushing toward the body but she was gone,” the witness recalled. “Her body landed there but her head and leg hit the fence there. You can see it’s bent, there were clothes and blood stuck there.”
