The death of Facebook second-in-command Sheryl Sandberg’s husband on Friday night occurred after “he fell off a treadmill and cracked his head open” while on vacation in Mexico, officials said.
David Goldberg, a prominent Silicon Valley executive, collapsed while working out at the Four Seasons Resort near Punta Mita, close to the vacation town of Puerto Vallarta.
Mexican officials at the private resort told The New York Times the incident seemed to be an accident and said the 47-year-old had died of head trauma and blood loss.
Goldberg left his room and headed to the exercise area at around 4 p.m. that day. Some three hours later, his brother, Robert Goldberg, found him on the floor with a pool of blood around him.
While no one knows exactly what happened, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Nayarit State told The Times it appeared the tech veteran had slipped off the treadmill and busted his head.
Goldberg was transported with weak vital signs to Hospital San Javier in Nuevo Vallarta, where he eventually died from his injuries.
He was vacationing with wife Sheryl at the time, according to Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook and a family friend.
His death was first announced Saturday by his brother and the Web site SurveyMonkey, of which David was CEO, but people speculated about the specifics amid a lack of details.
Sheryl Sandberg has not made a public statement or commented about her husband’s death. The family is expected to hold an invitation-only celebration of Goldberg’s life on Tuesday at Stanford Memorial Auditorium in California.
Men looking to attend have been told to ditch the ties “in keeping with Dave’s lifelong hatred of ties,” according to an e-mailed invitation sent to friends of the couple.
Mourners have also been urged to not take pictures or make social-media posts related to the event “out of respect for the family.”
With Post Wire Services