An elderly couple fell to their deaths from the balcony of their penthouse apartment on a grassy Etobicoke street Tuesday morning, in what police are treating as a double suicide.

Neighbours identified the married couple as Vladimir Fiser and Marika Ferber. They said the pair suffered from health issues, particularly Ferber, whom they described as having bouts of chronic pain.

Division 23 Staff Sgt. Brent Swackhamer confirmed a single suicide note was found inside the couple’s 18th-floor apartment at 63 Widdicombe Hill Blvd., near Kipling Ave. and Eglinton Ave. W.

Residents peered over their balconies Tuesday morning, watching as police lifted an orange tarp where the bodies lay on the lawn in front of the apartment building, next to a flower bed and a neat row of bushes.

“I’ve lived here all my life and we’ve never had a suicide, or a murder, or anything like this,” said Jessica Jarosz, 23, who awoke at around 7:30 a.m. to a frantic call from her mother, who’d just learned what happened.

Doug Alldred, 24, said he would help the couple from time to time around their apartment, once showing them how to set up their new television. His mother, Laurie, helped clean their apartment, he said.

“They were nice, genuine, friendly, happy people,” said Alldred. “When I would talk to them, they would always try to give me money.”

Laurie was visibly emotional as she left the building moments earlier, telling reporters Ferber had chronic back and leg pain and was prone to fainting, while Fiser had heart problems.

“It was the worst shock. It was the last thing you’d ever expect them to do.”

Laurie said she took comfort in the fact they died together.

Another neighbour from the same floor said the couple “were best friends all their lives,” who decided to get married after their respective spouses passed away several years ago. Fiser was a psychologist, she said, and Ferber had been a ballet dancer.

In recent days, she said she felt “they were very unhappy,” pointing to what she described as Ferber’s deteriorating health.

Shortly past noon, two black vans pulled in front of the building. The bodies were loaded onto gurneys and taken away.

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A few storeys up, an elderly woman leaned over her balcony, her face fixed and hands clasped, as if in prayer.