The son of a retried New York City Supreme Court judge committed suicide by jumping naked from his family’s 16th floor apartment after killing his mother with a lamp, according to friends.
He had previously been a hard-partying frat boy in college and was now “rudderless” after failing out.
Tuesday morning, Douglas Solomon, 26, was discovered ‘butt naked’ and dead in the street in front of his family’s Upper East Side apartment.
Inside the flat, Diane, his mother, 56 years old, was discovered. She had been killed by being struck by a lamp shade.
Uncertainty surrounds Douglas’s motivation for the murder-suicide, although acquaintances told The New York Post that he was aimless and living at home several years after failing to graduate from Rhodes, an esteemed liberal arts college in Tennessee.
Friends reported that his mother had been “very proud” of him for enrolling in the institution.
He showed numerous symptoms of depression. He wasn’t doing much of anything, even going out to clubs.
He was antisocial, and it appeared that he didn’t want to be approached.
One of his old classmates told The Post, “You don’t want to ask what’s going on to a person who has nothing going on.”
Another person claimed that the brutal murder-suicide could only be explained by the fact that “something snapped” in the victim.
“Doug felt something inside of him crack.” His life was changed in what must have been a 30-second moment of bad judgement.
I find it hard to think that any of it was planned.
He cannot live with himself after witnessing his mother’s unconsciousness.
He didn’t want to spend 30 years in prison doing nothing. The young man was so sweet.
It’s terrible to be remembered for this, the friend added.
When the two people died, his father, retried NYC Supreme Court justice Charles Solomon, was not at home.
He and his wife had reportedly discussed Doug’s future the night before, according to police sources.
The 26-year-old appeared to be unemployed and not in school. Despite having a bright future in sports, he had left Rhodes in 2014 during his first year.
In the years that followed, he discreetly spent time with his family but, according to his friends, was prone to drinking and smoking marijuana at home.
Leah, Doug’s older sister, resides in the city as well. She resides in Kips Bay and works for an acquisitions company.
Leah and Charles haven’t made any statements about the killings in the media.