By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
A woman holding a baby boy plunged eight stories out of an apartment window to her death in an apparent suicide Wednesday, but the child survived, New York City police said. Cynthia Wachenheim, 44, was found on the street with her son, Keston, in her arms. A police officer who responded took the boy, believed to be 10 months old, to a hospital in Harlem, where he was listed in critical but stable condition.
A window to the upper Manhattan apartment was wide open, and there were no signs of struggle inside, police said. There were no safety bars on the apartment's windows. Area resident Steven Dominguez, 18, was walking to a grocery store with his mother, Adelina Dominguez, when he saw the woman fall. ‘I heard a small scream when she was in the air, and then I heard a nasty bang,’ he told DNAInfo.com. ‘It sounded like a big piece of wood hitting the ground. When he approached Wachenheim on the ground, he saw the baby face down on the pavement.
‘I was shocked,’ he said. ‘I couldn't believe it.’ He said his mother went to pick up the baby but an emergency response person told her to stand back. A neighbor told The New York Post Wachenheimwas heard arguing with her husband, 48-year-old Hal Bacharach, at the upscale The Sutton co-op at 147th Street and Bradhurst Avenue at around 1pm. The man was seen on surveillance video leaving the apartment building after the fight. About two hours later, at 3.25pm, witnesses saw Wachenheim leaping from her eighth-story apartment window with her son in her arms in an apparent suicide.
The victim, described by a local resident as an attorney, was pronounced dead at the scene. Neighbors say baby Keston is the couple’s only child together. Sources tell The Post the woman was suffering from severe postpartum depression and left behind a rambling, largely incomprehensible seven-page suicide letter. Police also found depression medication inside the unit. Wachenheim was clutching her son to her chest when her back hit the pavement. On impact, the baby bounced out of her arms onto the sidewalk and started wailing. Police say the child is being treated at Harlem Hospital Center and is expected to survive.
Neighbor Christina Johnson told the New York Times the victim and her family had lived in the building for about three years, and she had never heard the parents fight until today. Johnson said she heard Bacharach yelling at his wife, asking her over and over again why she wouldn't pick up the phone. The woman added that the victim was an attorney in New York State Supreme Court and graduated from the prestigious Columbia Law School, becoming licensed as a lawyer in 1996. Johnson speculated that the husband, who works in sales, may have lost his job because he had been spending a lot of time at home recently.
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