"This is a terrible tragedy," said Parkland Mayor Michael Udine when reached on the phone. "I didn't see it, but she left a long, detailed suicide note."
Udine said drug use was suspected as well, though he wasn't aware of the details. On Baldomero's Twitter page, she makes one reference to drug use.
"That sux," Baldomero wrote on March 23. "I actually didn't get to go. Long story. But rolled pretty hard at some random ass pool party & got stuck ina k hole."
K-hole is a term used to describe the
effects of the drug Ketamine, which at times mimics the symptoms of schizophrenia and can cause users to feel completely disassociated from the world.
The nature of the relationship between Baldomero and Brown isn't known, though Baldomero indicated on her Twitter page last month that she had no boyfriend. "Single as a dollar baby," she wrote on June 13.
Her last writing came on June 24, when she wrote that her left ankle was swollen and that she was "very paranoid" she had been bitten by a poisonous spider.
UPDATED: The Sun-Sentinel reported the following concerning Brown:
Hours before they hanged themselves, the young couple posted foreboding messages on their Facebook pages.
"Momma, its not your fault," Joseph M. Brown, 22, wrote at 4:39 a.m. Monday.
About an hour earlier, Nikole Baldomero, known as Nikayla, 24, posted that she was "at peace."
... "No one was expecting anything like this," said Brittany Potter, 19, another friend who had known Brown for about two years and dated him before she went away to college. "He was smart and charming. He had some rough patches, but we all thought he would pull through."
Potter declined to elaborate on Brown's struggles, other than to say he had been recently looking for work as a diesel mechanic. "It's not my place to say," she said.