Death of Broadway Singing Coach Barbara Maier Gustern Has Been Classified As a Homicide

The death last week of Broadway singing coach Barbara Maier Gustern has been classified by New York police as a homicide. Her attacker remains at large.

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Broadway singing coach Barbara Maier Gustern passed away at age 87 after being pushed to the ground by a woman outside of her apartment building in Manhattan. She died from a traumatic brain injury.

The NYPD Crime Stoppers released photos from surveillance footage near Gustern's W. 28th Street apartment. The suspect in the photos has long auburn hair and is wearing a black jacket or coat, a white dress and a long scarf.

Gustern had coached the singer Debbie Harry, and recently coached the cast of the 2019 Broadway revival of Oklahoma!.

"I've never been hit so hard in my life," Ms. Gustern told her friend and colleague Barbara Bleier after the attack. Her condition quickly deteriorated and she was taken to the hospital before being transferred to Bellevue Medical Center.

As Ms. Gustern was in the hospital, her grandson AJ Gustern shared, "She's just a ball of light in a world that is often dark and doesn't make any sense," adding that if the woman who attacked her has a mental illness he prays that she receives help.

Gustern's funeral is scheduled for Saturday, March 26 at 2 p.m. ET at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood.