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Woman Watching Sunrise on Her Roof Falls to Her Death, Police Say

 Elena Gladkikh, 27, plunged from the roof of her building on West 37th Street and 10th Avenue.
Elena Gladkikh, 27, plunged from the roof of her building on West 37th Street and 10th Avenue.
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DNAinfo/Trevor Kapp; GoFundMe (inset)

MANHATTAN — The husband of a woman who died after falling from her Hell's Kitchen roof was told of her death by a man she'd brought home to watch the sunrise with her, police and sources said.

Elena Gladkikh, 27, was atop her six-story apartment building on West 37th Street, near 10th Avenue, about 8:45 a.m. Sunday when she fell, an NYPD spokesman said.

She was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital, the spokesman said.

"My wife is dead!" neighbor Scott Peterson heard the husband yelling after she fell. 

"I'd just woken up. I couldn't believe it," Peterson, 47, said. "It didn't seem like it was real."

Gladkikh had been drinking at West 17th Street restaurant da Umberto when she met a man and invited him to come back to her roof to watch the sunrise, police sources said. 

They bought a six-pack of beer and hung out on top of the building, but when they decided to leave they discovered the door had locked behind them. 

Gladkikh called her husband in the apartment below to ask him to unlock the door and asked her friend to hide to keep from embarrassing her partner, sources added. 

She then sat on the edge of the roof, lost her balance and fell off. 

When her husband arrived, Gladkikh's friend told that she had fallen off the roof, sources said. 

The husband then dialed 911.  

The Medical Examiner will determine how she died, police said.

The friend she was with, a man in his 20s or 30s, wasn't injured and no criminality was suspected, police said.