Jacob Zieben and Jacob Pauls were fast friends when they met in 2013. In addition to their shared name, the couple were young homosexual men fresh from the university who recently moved to New York City.
After spending two years glued to the hip, Paulson said that his dynamic changed quickly after his friend, a personal Texas coach, began dating the Donald Hood model.
“He simply disappeared,” Paulson said this week in a telephone interview, drowning. “I had no contact with him, and I just wanted it to be happy, and that’s all that really mattered to me. And I expected it to be.”
Although the loss of chopped friendship, Paulson said he moved years ago. He did not attend the Wedding of 2020 of his former friend and only knew about the social networks that Jacob and Donald changed their last names to Zieben-Hood.
But Paulson was shocked and flooded with memories when, only two weeks ago, he saw the name of his former friend in the headlines after the police found the 34 -year -old man dead inside his Harlem apartment.
When the authorities entered the apartment on July 31 after Donald asked for help, they found Jacob collapsed on his toilet with a head injury and multiple white weapon wounds in the back of his leg, a deep enough to penetrate the muscles, according to loading documents.
His death occurred after years of alleged abuses dating from 2022, detailed in a series of accusation documents against Donald about serious crimes charges, including strangulation and threats. Those charges remain pending.
Donald, a 40 -year -old model with more than 67,000 Instagram followers, was arrested on July 31 and accused of several crimes, including theft. He is currently being held at Rikers Island without bail. Prosecutors have not accused anyone of murder or appointed suspect for Jacob’s death, citing their pending autopsy, but said they are investigating the case as a homicide.
In the days elapsed since his death, Paulson and seven others who met Jacob spoke with NBC News when they slowly found out about the life of the personal coach during the last decade. And although his fatal stabbing is a shock, those who met Jacob believe that Donald cut his friends, already potential lines of life, years before he really needed them.
“I wish I would have done more, but, in retrospect, what would you do?” One of Jacob’s old friends said, Marti G. Cumming.
Donald’s lawyer declined to comment.
After studying biomedical sciences at the University of Texas A&M, Jacob moved to New York City in 2013 and quickly met Paulson and Joshua Baker.
Paulson and Baker said that the trio was never “anywhere” and spent endless days locked in the apartment Hell’s Kitchen in Jacob, who they say that he ignored Central Park, playing video games, eating fried food and dreaming of his futures.
“We were these little and beautiful beautiful who tried to discover where we fit in New York society,” Baker said.
Cumming met Jacob at the same time and gravitated towards his disinterest and desire for community. Cummings said that a prominent drag that queen of New York City that they use/they pronounts, said Jacob accompanied them between concerts late at night to make sure they arrived safely.
“He was a protector, that’s why I think that all this is sadder,” said Cumming. “He couldn’t be protected from this.”
Lauren Foster, a friend of Donald since 2000, described him as “a good guy” and said he never had the impression that his relationship was worried. However, he acknowledged that the roles that Jacob and Donald played were clear.
“I don’t think it’s a lot of friends,” Foster said about Jacob. “Don was a kind of alpha in the relationship.”
“There is always a person who is dominant in the relationship, and who was definitely Don,” he added. “I think Don would be alpha in any relationship. It is bigger than life.”
Baker said that shortly after Jacob met Donald in the spring of 2015, Jacob began to dodge invitations, reduce telephone calls and ignore text messages. Soon, Baker said, Jacob began blocking his friends’s phone numbers.
Jonathan Starkey, a friend of Texas, recalled that in a conversation about that time, Jacob said that “he had changed a lot, and that Donald was a bit possessive, jealous and restricted with whom he was in contact.”
“Jacob was not really someone who let people tell him what to do, that’s why it’s so strange,” Starkey said.
Jacob’s abrupt silence led Baker to communicate with Donald.
“Jacob is very good,” Donald wrote to Baker in a direct message on November 5, 2015 on Facebook, according to screenshots of the conversation provided to NBC News. “He has decided to separate from his past, which unfortunately included his closest friends, to advance with a healthy life.”
“He has been very concentrated and is back on the right path in his life and to stay focused he will remain out of contact at the moment,” Donald added.
For years, the only updates that Jacob’s friends received about his friend came through social networks, where the images of the couple’s Instagrams showed what appeared to be a happy couple who was traveling around the world and lived a glamorous life in New York. The couple published love selfies, photos of their wedding in 2020 and snapshots with their families.
But judicial documents paint a prolonged pattern of alleged abuse in the relationship that the authorities, according to the authorities, began in 2022.
The prosecutors said in the accusation documents presented after the death of Jacob that Donald had nine reports of national incidents filed against him since 2022, but did not provide more details about the nature of the incidents or who presented them. In November 2024, a protection order was issued in the New York County Criminal Court that ordered Donald to stop communicating and remained away from Jacob, according to accusation documents associated with Donald’s arrest in February.
In February, Donald was arrested and accused of strangulation, among several other positions, for allegedly attacking Jacob inside the Harlem apartment. Jacob “almost lost consciousness, and sustained swelling, substantial pain and redness of the neck” of the incident, according to the loading documents. Donald declared himself innocent of the charges in the case that is still pending.
A second judicial order of protection was issued in a criminal court in April, which once again prevented Donald from seeing or communicating with Jacob.
Donald was arrested again in June and accused of criminal contempt and threats, according to judicial documents. The court records claim that Donald held a knife in the direction of Jacob and said: “I will attack you.” He declared himself innocent of the charges, and the case is still pending.
Paulson said that earlier this year, Jacob followed him on Instagram and gave him hope that friends could connect again after a brief exchange in March.
“I was very excited that I would return to my life after letting him go as a friend,” Paulson said. “And then make me really end up permanently, he has only devastated me. He really destroyed me.”
Donald called 911 on July 31 from the apartment of a Jacob room in West 138th Street and told them that she found her dead husband in the bathroom.
When the police arrived, they found Donald sitting on their sofa with three cuts in the arm that then required suture points, a purple eye and bite marks, according to a criminal complaint. He told the authorities that Jacob had attacked him.
However, prosecutors say Jacob called his father from the bathroom before the attack and supposedly told him that Donald “came to him with knives and prevented him from leaving the apartment,” according to the criminal complaint. During the call, Jacob’s father supposedly listened to Donald shouting derogatory names in Jacob in the background, the complaint added.
Donald was arrested later that day and accused of robbery, aggravated criminal contempt, first -degree criminal contempt and possession of a weapon. On Thursday, he was scheduled to appear before the court, but a judge resigned from his appearance at the request of his lawyer.
He is now scheduled to appear on September 12, almost a month after Jacob’s funeral, scheduled for this weekend in San Antonio.
As the authorities continue to investigate the case, Jacob’s friends have been connecting and sharing old memories of their late friend.
“The years can happen, but he was our family until the end,” Baker said.
