After the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office found that former President Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana, died from “blunt impact injuries” and was ruled an accident, friends said that her staircase posed a danger to the 73-year-old.
“That has always been my fear,” Trump friend Nikki Haskell told Extra TV regarding the staircase. “She had one of those really beautiful staircases that was impossible to walk down. Narrow in the inside and wider as it got out. I was always afraid that she would fall.”
Police officials told local New York City media that Ivana Trump was found unresponsive a the bottom of the stairs with a coffee cup.
“I don’t know what happened, but it’s not hard for me to believe that that’s what happened. They were treacherous stairs,” Haskell added.
The Trump family has not issued any statement about the medical examiner’s report.
Haskell said that Ivana—the mother to Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump, and Eric Trump—rarely ventured outside during the COVID-19 epidemic.
“She became very reclusive,” she said. “She was really afraid of getting the virus, much more so than anybody that I know. She didn’t want to go anywhere, she didn’t want to travel. … She took it very, very seriously. She was afraid of getting sick.”
“She stayed in New York during that whole time. She never left at all, and she was by herself so I’m sure it was much more trying than I can even imagine.”
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Paolo Alavian, the owner of a restaurant near her home, told the New York Post that he saw Ivana on the evening she died. A personal aide accompanied her on a walk.
“I bumped into her outside,” Alavian said. “I said, ‘Señora, how are you? Good?’ She said, ‘I just went for my walk,’ and we chat [a] couple of minutes.” He added, “You could feel a little bit of tiredness but … she never complained about anything, never mentioned anything.”
