A despondent young couple, under pressure to break off their romance, instead chose suicide in front of a speeding LIRR train — leaving behind a multipage note that said they were going to a better place, sources told The Post yesterday.
“Two great people” are going to “paradise,” they wrote in a blue stenographer’s pad that was found on the Hollis, Queens, platform after their death leap Monday night.
“Everything will be good,” the note said.
Davon Smallwood, 25, and Ariana O’Neal, 21 — whose mother disapproved of their relationship — lived in Queens Village with their 2-year-old daughter.
In addition to the note, the tragic couple also left behind a black garbage bag stuffed with clothing, a bottle of Gorgi vodka and a can of Coca-Cola.
The young lovers had no IDs, and cops had to run their fingerprints to get their names. Most of their suicide note was in “illegible gibberish,” the sources said.
O’Neal recently ran away because her mother demanded she no longer bring Smallwood to the house, police sources said.
The mom was upset over his recent trouble with the law.“Her mom didn’t want the boyfriend living with all of them,” her landlord, Kinsley Senior, said last night. “She didn’t like him.”
The two were arrested earlier this month for allegedly stealing jewelry from a Jamaica, Queens store. A neighbor said they both dyed their hair red recently.
Terri Simmons, who lives directly across from the station, said she had never seen Smallwood before, but often saw O’Neal moping around the area.
She would spend hours sitting on a urine-soaked stairway leading to the railroad platform.
Simmons, 50, said she approached the young woman several times to ask if she was all right, but she never even raised her head.
At around 10:15 p.m. Monday, Simmons heard a “boom” from the bodies’ impact with the Manhattan-bound express train, and ran to the station.
An MTA cop who responded to the scene read the first page of the notebook and said, “Oh, my God, it’s a suicide note!”
He then put the notebook back on the platform and snapped pictures of every page, Simmons said.
MTA officials said the train was traveling 80 mph — the “maximum allowable speed” — as it barreled toward Penn Station.
The engineer spotted the couple moments before they leaped in front of his train, but was unable to stop in time, he told investigators.
The impact cracked the windshield.
About 125 passengers were on board the train, which was held at the station for nearly two hours as the couple’s mangled bodies were removed.
[NYPost]