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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Rowen Altenburger, NYU student found dead in swanky hotel of apparent suicide

Rowen Altenburger

A beautiful NYU student was found dead from an apparent suicide Tuesday in a swanky Bryant Park Hotel, police sources said.

Rowen Altenburger, 18, of Short Hills, NJ, was discovered about 12:45 p.m. after her mother called the hotel on West 40th Street to find out why her daughter had never checked out on Monday, police sources said.

The troubled teen was found with a plastic bag over her head, and she left a suicide note explaining she suffered from depression, law enforcement sources said.

“It can be easy to lose yourself. Not to mention lots of time,” Altenburger wrote on her website.

Altenburger posted images of her sometimes-dark paintings— titled “Live fast and Die Young” and “I’m not Real” — on the art-sharing website Cosmofunnel.com.

One of her paintings features a female’s face in covered in what appears to be blood; another shows a skeleton.

On Tuesday afternoon, a police vehicle pulled up to the hotel with three family members, who tearfully declined comment.

NYU has been plagued by suicides in recent years.

The school set up a “suicide-prevention” wall in its library atrium — the site of at least three suicides in recent years — in 2012.

An NYU spokesman didn’t return calls by press time.

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