Tragedy with a Kingsbridge connection

The rookie probation officer who, the Daily News reported last week, fatally shot herself in her office Oct. 10, grew up on Bailey Avenue, The Riverdale Press has learned.

Community Board 8 staffer Patricia Manning told us just now that Elizabeth Luna, 30, served on the board as a youth member in the mid-1990s. The exact years Ms. Luna spent on the board were unavailable, but Ms. Manning said she was appointed when Fernando Ferrer was borough president.

"She was very active, that I remember," Ms. Manning said. Ms. Luna was involved with Community Board 6 at the time of her death, she added.

"She was such a young, active person. I’m stunned,” said Board 8 member Laura Spalter, who served with Ms. Luna.

"She had ideas and she was very enthusiastic. That’s a real tragedy," she later added.

According to the News article, Ms. Luna frightened her colleagues when she used her Probation Department-issued firearm to commit suicide in her cubicle at the department's East 161st Street offices in the Bronx.

A single mother of two, Ms. Luna had recently spoken to the daily paper about her ineligibility for the city's free child day care program.