21 February,2009 01:24 PM IST | | Agencies
An aspiring actor and model hanged himself on the monkey bars of a playground early Friday morningu00a0-- hours after hinting at his plans to friends on Facebook, the police said.
Paul Zolezzi (30), whose body was found in Mount Prospect Park, had achieved some success modelling. But he turned to heroin after he failed to achieve his dreams of fame and fortune, said his mother, Stephanie.
The cryptic suicide note, left in the form of his "status update" on the social-networking site, said only that he was "born in San Francisco, became a shooting star over everywhere, and ended his life in Brooklyn... And couldn't have asked for more."
When Zolezzi was 8, his father, Mark, threw himself off the Golden Gate Bridge, his mother said.
"He had to grow up without a father," said Stephanie, who volunteers on a suicide hot line at her church in Daly City, Calif. "That's what is probably behind his problem."
Zolezzi was getting methadone treatment and planning to return to an old job. "He didn't have the best start, and he really wanted more than anything to overcome all of that and to not be buried by issues of his childhood," said a friend.
"But no matter how hard he tried to escape that, he suffered."
Zolezzi had a steady string of girlfriends over the years, but was heartbroken after his breakup with his fiancu00e9e in Brooklyn several years ago, his mother said.
His short postings on Facebook depict the terrible lead-up to his suicide.
"Paul is wondering, what unspeakable act did I do in a previous life to deserve this one?" he posted in late January.
"Paul is going to be the first person ever to hang himself on the way out of Portland!" he wrote before moving back to New York. "Everything here sucks!"
Shortly after Zolezzi left his Facebook suicide note, one of his friends replied with a post that read: "Are you dying? or just staying in Brooklyn? I hope it's the latter."
