Dead in Columbia Dorm: Woman Died Due To Drug Overdose

A 21-year-old woman was found dead in a Columbia University dormitory room in Manhattan.

Police think that Jessica Fingers, of Monticello, N.Y., may have died of a drug overdose.

She was found unresponsive and was lying facing up on the floor of the dorm at around 11:30 a.m. on Sunday.

The New York Post reported that Fingers was a former student of the university, and she was staying with a female friend and visiting her boyfriend.

The school said that Fingers, a former Columbia cross-country runner, took a leave of absence last year. Authorities suspect that she and her boyfriend were doing drugs.

“It is with deep sadness and regret that I write to inform you of the untimely loss of one of our students, who has been on leave from Columbia but visiting campus at the time of her passing,” Dean of Student Affairs Kevin Shollenberger said in an campus e-mail, according to the paper.

Elaborating further, the New York Daily News reported that Peter Russell, her boyfriend made the discovery that she died.

“I woke up and the love of my life was dead next to me,” Russell wrote on his Facebook page, according to the News. “My life is over … Shes gone so i have nothing to live for … (sic).”

Fingers had been recruited to Columbia University’s women’s varsity track-and-field team, the Middletown Times Herald-Record reported in 2008. She got a full scholarship to the college, the Daily News said.