Yesterday, the funeral for NYPD Lieutenant Michael Pigott, who killed himself a week after issuing a command that led to a man's death by Taser, was held in Islip, Long Island. Hundreds of police officers were on hand to remember the 21-year veteran of the force, who left behind his wife and three children. Rev. Douglas Madlon revealed during the service that Pigott, stripped of his badge and gun, was afraid he wouldn't be a......

Hundreds of officers from the NYPD and elsewhere came out to pay their respects to Lieutenant Michael Pigott yesterday at the first day of his wake in Islip. Pigott died Thursday of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, a week after being embroiled in a media frenzy following the Taser-induced death of an emotionally disturbed man. Friends and family paid tribute to Pigott yesterday with one lifelong friend telling Newsday, "He was a gentle-hearted person, big heart,......

The wake for NYPD Lieutenant Michael Pigott, who killed himself on Thursday, is being held in Islip, Long Island today and tomorrow, with funeral service on Monday. Pigott shot himself in the head at Emergency Service Unit headquarters, apparently racked with guilt and worry after his command led to the fatal Tasering of emotionally disturbed man, Iman Morales, in Brooklyn on September 24. However, the Brooklyn DA's office said they weren't thinking about charging him......

NYPD Emergency Services Unit Lieutenant Michael Pigott, who killed himself yesterday morning, left behind a suicide note noting his remorse and concern over his family. A police source told the Post, "He didn't want his family to see him cuffed up and jailed. The guy felt he disgraced his family." Last week, Pigott ordered a sergeant to Taser an emotionally disturbed man, Iman Morales, who was standing naked on a storefront ledge in Brooklyn. Though......

Lieutenant Michael Pigott, who ordered the fatal Tasering of an emotionally disturbed person, killed himself this morning. WABC 7 reports "Pigott reported to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, where he took his life shortly after 6 a.m." and another officer "sustained a non-life threatening injury during the incident." Pigott had been stripped of his gun and badge after the Tasering, where Iman Morales fell to his death, and yesterday, the 21-year police force veteran had......

David Foster Wallace, whose writing evoked comparisons to Pynchon and Borges, died on Friday. The LA Times reports his wife found that he hanged himself in their Pomona, CA home (he taught creative writing at Pomona College). LA Times book editor David Ulin, in NYC for a National Book Critics Circle Board meeting yesterday, said, "What was a party is now a wake. People were speechless and just blown away." Wallace wrote a number of......

Two Americans were stabbed in Beijing today by a crazed Chinese man who then immediately committed suicide. The victims were a man who was killed and a woman who was injured, both relatives of a U.S. Men's Volleyball Coach. The stabber, a 47-year-old man from Hangzhou, then threw himself from the second story of the site of the attack, the 13th-century Drum Tower three miles from the main Olympics site.......

Yesterday at around 4:40 p.m., reports came in that a male was found dead, from an apparent stabbing, in a brownstone on Hicks Street, at the corner of Love Lane in Brooklyn Heights. Today the NY Sun says that the "42-year-old man [Graham Barnett] was found dead with multiple stab wounds to his torso"--he was reportedly found in the bathtub and the police recovered knives from the scene. It is suspected that Barnett, who had......

According to the LA Times, Bruce Ivins, a government biodefense scientist at U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, died in an apparent suicide. Sources say Ivins, who had aided the FBI with analysis in the anthrax-laced letter attacks in 2001, was going to be charged for the attacks. In 2001, letters with traces of anthrax were received by the NY Post and NBC News in September (after the 9/11 attacks) while another sent......

Photograph of a shrine dedicated to Korshunova outside her apartment building submitted by reader Michael Yesterday, Ruslana Korshunova's mother arrived from Kazhakstan to identify her daughter's body at the medical examiner's office. Officials ruled that the 20-year-old model had jumped to her death from her Water Street apartment on Saturday, but with the world ahead of her, many people are wondering what drove to her to suicide. The Post suggests Korshunova was in a......

Yesterday morning, a doctor jumped to his death from the 17th floor of a Beth Israel Hospital building. The body of 44-year-old Douglas Meyer was found "on an air-conditioning unit between two buildings" by a security guard at 7 a.m. Meyer, called a "'gifted' gastroenterologist and liver specialist," had completed his rounds. A hospital technician told the Post, "We started calling him at 7 a.m., and we couldn't reach him. And then one of the......

The medical examiner's office determined suicide as cause of death for Ruslana Korshunova, a 20-year-old model who fell from her Water Street apartment in lower Manhattan Saturday afternoon. Friends gathered outside the building, crying and leaving flowers. Many reports noted that there was a hole in the construction netting outside her building; Newsday reported, the DOB couldn't "confirm whether the fall caused the hole and, if so, why the netting did not prevent her death."......

Police believe that a 20-year-old woman committed suicide by jumping out of her Water Street apartment's balcony around 2:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon. The woman was identified as Kazhakstan model Ruslana Korshunova. Newsday reported, "It appeared she fell from the balcony of her ninth-floor apartment, police said, where a large hole was visible in construction netting hanging on the front of the 12-story building." A Con Ed worker, who had been talking to a cop......

A bench warrant was issued for the arrest of Samuel Israel III, the hedge fund founder who was convicted of scamming investors of $450 million. Israel was supposed to report for a 20-year prison sentence in Massachusetts on Monday, but instead, his empty car was found on the Bear Mountain Bridge with "Suicide is painless" written on the hood. Speculation is high that Israel staged his death. NY State police investigator Bruce Cuccia said, "It......

A distraught 34-year-old woman threw herself from the Brooklyn Bridge yesterday, plunging 100 feet from the pedestrian walkway near the Manhattan shoreline into the East River. An NYPD Harbor Unit quickly responded to the scene and pulled the suicidal woman from the water. Somehow she was relatively unscathed--without a scratch or a broken bone--and was treated at a hospital for aspirating some water, which is common in near drowning incidents. Fewer than 10 people have......

A state official confirmed that a retired state trooper who had headed former Governor Pataki's state police protection unit committed suicide. It was Berwick's 12-year-old daughter who found him in their Albany garage, "after disregarding a note left on the door telling her not to enter." Governor Pataki told the AP, "My family is just devastated. He was an ultimate professional who put his life on the line to protect us." The NY State Police......

Yesterday afternoon, a Brooklyn man was apprehended after threatening a City College student and holding what looked like a gun--but turned out to be a pellet gun--against the head of another student. The police convinced him to drop the gun and Kirk Hanley, 22, who had also pointed the gun at his own head, was found with suicide notes and taken to St. Luke's Roosevelt for observation. The incident took place at City College's Harlem......

Starting today, teams of six NYPD officers will be patrolling the subway system in 12 hour shifts to thwart would-be terrorists. You’ll be able to easily identify the squads – called “Torch Teams” – by their rifles, MP5 submachine guns, handguns, body armor and bomb-sniffing dogs. The program is being paid for with $151 million from taxpayers nationwide, allocated through D.C. The Torch Teams will function like the similarly equipped NYPD “Hercules Teams” (pictured) above......

After a 12-year-old Brooklyn girl killed herself, her mother is speaking out against her peers and her school. Last week, Mercedes Herrera found her daughter Maria near death in her bedroom closet. Maria, who had tied a belt around her neck, died shortly thereafter at Brookdale Hospital. Initial reports of Herrera's death noted that she was upset that her stepfather wouldn't let her visit a friend, but her mother detailed her classmates' cruel behavior. Mercedes......

Last night a gunman on the run in the Bronx got stuck in Yankees' post-game gridlock after stealing a Con Ed van. Then he took his own life before police could apprehend him. Yesterday's game went down to the wire, and it was 9:44 p.m. when Mariano Rivera threw the last pitch (the batter grounded into a game-ending throw to first base). As fans filtered out of Yankee Stadium to either hop on a train......

Photograph of police investigating the United Nations death by John Heilprin/AP After the discovery of a woman's body on the lawn of the United Nations building, the police have identified the woman as Maria DiBiase, who worked with the Austrian consulate. According to the Daily News, DiBiase "apparently jumped after showing up for work at the UN early Sunday." The 44-year-old appears to have leaped from the 19th floor and her body was found......

NYC - United Nations Headquarters, by wallyg at flickr A woman appears to have fallen or jumped from a very high floor of the U.N. Secretariat Building at 405 East 42nd St. early today. Per wcbstv.com, U.N. security personnel escorted detectives and NYPD officers to the rear of the building, where the woman's body was splayed out on the lawn. She was quickly covered with a sheet and the area was cordoned with yellow......

Yoko Ono isn't showing an ounce of compassion for heavy metal musician (and Suicide Girl) Lennon Murphy, who was named after the late Beatle by her mother. Ono is now suing the musician for "tarnishment" of John Lennon's name, "fraudulently" registering the name as a trademark and intentionally exploiting it. Lennon has been using her first name professionally since 1997, and in 2000 (when signed with Arista Records) she cleared the use of the name......

MUSIC: Come enjoy the Whitney after dark tonight as the museum's live showcase series invites Dan Deacon (pictured) to the stage. If you haven't seen Deacon before, get ready for some Casio keyboard electro-rock compositions and an art dance party. Friday // 7pm // Whitney Museum [945 Madison Ave] // Pay what you want EVENT: The Moth Story Shop presents “The One that Got Away: Stories from South Street Seaport” tonight. The following storytellers will......

A Bay Ridge pharmacist embroiled in a public steroid investigation appears to have killed himself. John Rossi was found last night in the office above the pharmacy, with a fatal gunshot wound to his head and a pistol in his hand. Bottles of Johnnie Walker whiskey, Valium, and Coca-Cola were on the desk in front of his body; another bullet slug was found in the office, causing a police source to tell the Daily News,......

An executive at a subprime loan company that was financially circling the drain stated that the murder of his wife and consequent suicide was not related to money worries, but personal problems. Walter Buczynski was a 59-year-old vice president of Fieldstone Mortgage Corp., a mortgage lending company sinking into bankrupty. He'd told neighbors that he would soon be looking for a new job, but they didn't sense an irregular level of distress. Nonetheless, Buczynski broke......

The family and friend of the Minnesota tourist who took a fatal plunge from a Midtown hotel this past weekend are saying her death is not a suicide. Twenty-one-year-old Jennifer Olson fell 60 feet from a fire escape at the Night Hotel and earlier reports suggested she jumped, but her friend, Timothy O'Neill, told the Daily News, "I don't believe it was suicide. I believe it was accidental. After drinking six or seven hours, people......

A 21-year-old woman visiting New York City from a small town in Minnesota killed herself Friday evening by jumping from the fire escape of a midtown hotel. The suicide ended a weekend that was the result of winning tickets to Friday night's Z100 Jingle Ball concert at Madison Square Garden. Jennifer Olson was from the town of Eveleth, Minnesota, population: 3,000. She checked into the Night Hotel on 45th St. with her male friend Timothy......

The NY Post has another story in the ongoing ogling at Theresa Duncan's death. The East Village artist apparently "fell into suicidal depression after telling friends that oddball rocker Beck backed out of her movie project." So now we have yet another baffling peek into the paranoid mindset Duncan and her long time boyfriend Jeremy Blake were in when they committed suicide, just one week apart from each other. In the January issue of Vanity......

MOVIE: BAM pays homage to the late Barbara Stanwyck tonight with a screening of Forbidden. The 1932 Frank Capra-directed film (which tells the tale of a librarian who has fallen for an unobtainable/married man) was supposedly influenced by his real-life affair with the leading lady. Critic and historian Elliott Stein will discuss the film after the 6:50 screening. 4:30, 6:50 and 915pm // BAM Rose Cinemas [30 Lafayette Ave., Fort Greene] // $11 Meanwhile, the......