MANHATTAN — On the day Kea Fiedler was fatally struck by a Brooklyn-bound L train in Union Square, she seemed to have her whole life ahead of her.
The 27-year-old graduate student had just come from an exciting meeting with her college adviser who gave her apples for a pie she hoped to make with her serious girlfriend on their weekend getaway in Beacon, N.Y. She was tired, but looking forward to watching the second presidential debate that night with her girlfriend and some other friends.
When Fiedler was hit by the train at about 4 p.m. on Oct. 19, a schizophrenic woman — who was later charged with another subway shoving death — approached police at the scene and told them that she had shoved Fiedler into the side of the train.
But after detaining and questioning the woman, Melanie Liverpool-Turner, police decided she was making the story up, concluding it was a suicide because "three witnesses stated they saw her jump into the tracks," NYPD spokeswoman Jessica McRorie said Monday. Liverpool-Turner fatally pushed another woman in front of an oncoming train weeks after Fiedler's death.
But sources have also said that detectives have softened their stance on Fiedler's suicide theory, after finding the witness evidence inconclusive. They are now considering that the scholar, who hails from Germany, may have fallen, sources said.
"We think the police should try to find out more details about everything. They made it very easy for themselves," Fiedler's sister, Jana Richers, 40, who lives in Germany, told DNAinfo New York.
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