It was a chilly Wednesday evening in April, when according to neighbors, Michelle Rothberg, 36, limped slowly down 103rd Street with a cane. Ms. Rothberg, a paralegal for a Midtown law firm, was an outgoing young woman with freckles and strawberry-blonde hair. Friends reported that she had surgery on her foot in March, right before the hospitals stopped all elective procedures to make room for Covid-19 patients.

Friends said that after her operation, Ms. Rothberg wasn’t supposed to put any weight on her foot and had planned to have everything delivered. Not anticipating a global pandemic, she could not have known food deliveries would become nearly impossible. Laura Davidson, Ms. Rothberg’s college room-mate, said that she had called Michelle, worried about how her friend was going to get food.

“She told me she didn’t have much left to eat and was down to a few boxes of crackers,” said Laura Davidson. “I live in Chicago so there wasn’t anything I could do for her. If I had been in New York, I would have brought her some food myself but that wasn’t doable. I sent her a food care package through Amazon, but I don’t think it arrived yet.” When Ms. Rothberg couldn’t get through to any delivery services she apparently called several friends to see if they could help. A few had the virus and the others were afraid to go out shopping. “Michelle told me on our last call yesterday that if she couldn’t get a delivery that day, she was going to go out herself to the corner store. I reminded her that she wasn’t supposed to put any weight on her foot, but she said she didn’t have a choice,” said Ms. Davidson.

According to police, a neighbor in her building spotted Ms. Rothberg using a cane as she inched her way down two flights of stairs and out the front door. Based on the conversation with her friend, police believe that Ms. Rothberg’s destination was the corner market at the end of her block. What the victim didn’t know was that the store on her street had closed down nearly three days before because the owner and his wife had both contracted the coronavirus.

An elderly woman living across the street told police she remembers seeing Ms. Rothberg standing out in front of her building around 6pm on April 15 talking to a deliveryman. “I didn’t get a good look at him,” said the woman. Police say she reported that the unknown man appeared to be stocky and wore a dark-gray face mask with dark glasses. According to the woman, he had been standing by the front door of Ms. Rothberg’s building holding what appeared to be bags of Chinese food when Ms. Rothberg slowly hobbled up.

“I couldn’t hear what they were talking about,” said the neighbor, “but I saw the deliveryman start to walk away with all his bags. Then the woman who was killed said something to him and he turned around and came back. She could barely get up the front steps and the next thing you know the deliveryman followed her into the building.”

After repeated attempts to reach their daughter, Michelle Rothberg’s parents, who live in Oak Brook IL, contacted the NYPD and asked them to do a wellness check on Michelle. When the police arrived at the woman’s apartment, they found Ms. Rothberg’s body slumped in a chair at her kitchen table, a pair of chopsticks in her left hand. Open cartons of moo shu pork, wonton soup, two egg rolls and shrimp lo mein were neatly placed on the table. White paper fortunes from the inside of two broken fortune cookies were found in her closed right hand. One said “A beautiful, smart, and loving person will be coming into your life” and the other “A dubious friend may be an enemy in camouflage.” Truer words could not have been spoken.