Lord Hurd's daughter-in-law died in New York City, apparent suicide plunge

Lord Hurd's daughter-in-law, Catherine, was discovered dead, apparently from a suicide plunge from her four-story apartment in New York City.

Saturday morning at 4:27 a.m., Catherine Hurd, daughter-in-law of Lord Hurd of Westwell and wife of a British diplomat, was found dead on the pavement outside her home in Upper East Side, New York City. After jumping from the top of the 4-story building, Ms. Hurd was taken to Cornell University Medical Centre but was soon pronounced dead.

New York Police Department treats the case as suicide, saying there is no criminality suspected.

An anonymous neighbor told reporters that Catherine was a lovely woman, very pleasant, always smiling as she lived in the building for 6 months, reported Telegraph. On the day she died, she had seemed normal and happy, the neighbor said.

Some voices were heard from Hurd's home around midnight on Friday, but just some people talking, not at an arguing tone, according to neighbors.

Catherine was about to return to England next week when her husband, Thomas, finishes his career as a member of the British Mission to the United Nations.

Ms. Hurd has been in New York for the past few years, working for the British delegation on the UN security council, specializing in the Middle East, G20 and Africa. On her husband's Linkedin page, Thomas Hurd describes himself as personally keen on studying the interaction between business and geopolitics.

Catherine's father-in-law, Douglas Richard Hurd is a well-respected British Conservative politician and parliamentarian. Lord Hurd served in the government from 1979 to 1990, with relatively uncontroversial policies. During his tenure as Foreign Secretary, Lord Hurd supervised Britain's diplomatic responses to the end of the Cold War, the Soviet's demise in 1991 and the first Gulf War. In his personal life, he was a writer of political thrillers and non-fictions.

Catherine left no suicide note.