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Mother of LIRR gap fatality Smead commits suicide

Susan Perry was always upbeat, running in triathlons and working at a veterinary clinic in her Minnesota hometown.

But when her only child, Natalie Smead, died after a fall into the gap at the Woodside Long Island Rail Road station in August 2006, friends and family say Perry went into a severe depression.

When a federal report in March cited the 18-year-old Smead's "alcohol-impaired...

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