Life doesn’t get much better than the one that pretty Dr. Kiersten Cerveny had -- a devoted husband, three children, and a prosperous practice in Long Island.
Yet this weekend the wealthy dermatologist revealed an ugly secret that evidently no one, including herself, knew about: She was a drug addict heading for a terrible crash.
This was to be a posthumous revelation, though. Too late to save Cerveny from an inglorious death-by-overdose on a Manhattan sidewalk where her panicked party-animal companions left her to die early Monday morning.
Investigators initially thought that 38-year-old Kiersten Cerveny may have been the victim of an actual assault when her bruised and half-naked body was discovered sprawled near a vestibule in the posh downtown neighborhood of Chelsea.
First responders, brought to the scene by an anonymous 911 caller, found her lying unresponsive there and, despite efforts to resuscitate Cerveny, she was promptly pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.
Today, sources for the NYPD say police have abruptly switched theories about what caused Cerveny’s premature death, suggesting instead that the physician’s weekend-long alcohol and cocaine binge “likely” induced a cardiac arrest.
The two gentleman friends with whom she had spent all night “snorting coke” and drinking to excess were initially identified as persons of interest in the tragic case, after the pair was caught on surveillance cameras placing an unconscious Cerveny outside their building.
But both have reportedly been cleared of suspicion now, following a brief probe of the circumstances that led them to carry Dr. Cerveny down several flights of stairs, in an attempt to “get her a cab” when CPR failed and “her lips turned blue.”
One, an acclaimed HBO producer, just suspended his role in an upcoming film project, amid criticism over his role in the scandalous incident. While the other, an upscale dealer with a criminal past, is also getting a lot of unwanted scrutiny … by drug enforcement agents.
America has been experiencing an epidemic of fatal overdoses in recent years, and, as this latest high-profile one proves, it isn’t merely derelicts or other “untouchables” who are filling those body bags anymore.
Sometimes it’s the “lucky” people.
