19-year-old East Meadow girl found dead

Police say they found the Stony Brook University student dead inside New York City apartment complex

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Jocelyn Pascucci, a 19-year-old East Meadow native and a student at Stony Brook University, died after police say they found her unconscious inside the lobby of an apartment complex in the East Village of New York City at 5 a.m. on Saturday, Feb. 16.

A spokesman for the New York City Police Department said that Pascucci was transported to the Beth Israel Medical Center, and was pronounced dead.

A cause of death was not released, and the spokesman said police are awaiting a medical examiner’s report.

Pascucci, who belonged to Stony Brook’s Undergraduate College of Arts, Culture and Humanities, recently wrote her own biography for the 2012-2013 school year on the university’s website. A marine vertebrate biology major on a pre-veterinary track, Pascucci described herself as “artsy,” and said she enjoyed drawing and painting.

“My hobbies include reading, shopping, drinking lots of coffee, watching nature documentaries… and just hanging around with friends,” Pascucci wrote.

The East Village apartment complex where Pascucci was found, located at 125 East 12th Street, called The Zachary, is a six-floor, 44-apartment condominium.

A message, posted on the Stony Brook University’s College of Arts, Culture, and Humanities website by university officials, read, “Jocelyn Pascucci was known throughout ACH for her contagious laugh, extraordinary sense of humor, selfless dedication to helping others, and her extreme loyalty and reliability. An Undergraduate Fellow in ACH, Jocelyn was a peer mentor of the highest caliber possible. She was always the first to volunteer to assist with program planning and implementation, and was known amongst the other fellows in her cohort as a caring, generous, and loving person.

“Jocelyn was also an original founding member of the SBU StandUp Charter, and later became a member of the executive board of that organization as the Public Relations Coordinator,” the message continued. “Her unyielding efforts to eradicating all forms of bullying and homophobia were true testaments to her character. The entire ACH Team… are deeply saddened by her untimely passing and view this as the loss of not only a gifted student, but as the loss of a member of our ACH family. Our thoughts and prayers go out to Jocelyn's family in this time of tragedy, but her legacy at Stony Brook will continue to live on.”