Novi Amelia, an adult model who made headlines for a traffic incident 10 years ago, was found dead at the Kalibata City apartment complex, South Jakarta after allegedly leaping to her death in an apparent suicide yesterday morning. She was 35 years old.
Police said that before she jumped, Novi was seen sitting on the balcony of her apartment on the eighth floor of Raflesia tower. A security guard who was passing by warned her about falling, before she allegedly leaped from the balcony at around 5am.
Abdullah, who heads the Pancoran Sub-Precinct Crime Investigation Unit, said that Novi only had on her undergarments when she jumped.
“Not long after the call to prayer for the dawn prayer, the victim jumped from the eighth floor, hitting the canopy on the first floor on her way down. Then, she fell on a parked car, hitting the rear window,” Abdullah explained.
Police suspect that Novi committed suicide due to depression. She was buried at a cemetery in her hometown of Tebing Tinggi, North Sumatra.
Born Linda Astuti, Novi began her modeling career in 2004. She became an adult model when she moved to Jakarta at 17 a year later. She often graced the pages of Indonesian adult magazine Popular, and was once offered the chance to be a pop dangdut singer in the late 2000s, which she declined because she felt she wasn’t ready to be a musician.
Novi had a long battle with depression through most of her adult life, as she was reported to have undergone treatments at a mental institution and a psychiatric hospital in Jakarta.
In October 2012, Novi made headlines in the country after she crashed her car into seven people in Tamansari, West Jakarta, injuring them. Police found that she was driving under the influence of narcotics and she was sentenced to six months in prison.
Novi had several other mental breakdowns in public in the early 2010s, including a time when she reportedly attempted to commit suicide by jumping in front of a car.
Indonesia currently does not have a dedicated government-run suicide prevention hotline, but if you or anyone you know is suffering from depression and/or contemplating suicide, you can get more information and resources from several local NGOs dealing with mental health and suicide prevention, such as intothelightid.org.
