Husband of Facebook’s Sandberg died on treadmill—official

In this July 10, 2013 file photo, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, left, and her husband David Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, walk to the morning session at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference in Sun Valley, Idaho. Goldberg was exercising at a gym in a Mexican resort when he collapsed before he died Friday, May 1, 2015, a person close to the family says. AP

MEXICO CITY, Mexico—US tech executive David Goldberg, the husband of Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, apparently died after falling on a treadmill and striking his head at an upscale resort in Mexico, authorities said Monday.

Goldberg, 47, was the chief executive of online polling firm SurveyMonkey and husband of Facebook’s chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. He died suddenly Friday, according to his brother, who did not give a cause of death.

Mexican officials on Monday confirmed he died in hospital after a workout accident during a family trip to a Pacific coast resort in Punta Mita, in Nayarit state.

“His relatives have indicated that he went to work out, and that they became concerned when he did not come back,” an official at the state prosecutor’s office said.

“They went looking for him and found him in a pool of blood next to a treadmill, apparently after he fell and struck his head at the hotel gym,” the official said, declining to be named.

Goldberg sustained “severe head trauma and hemorrhaging,” and died at a medical center in Nuevo Vallarta, the official added.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Goldberg was “an amazing person.”

“I am glad I got to know him. My thoughts and prayers are with Sheryl and her family,” Zuckerberg wrote in a posting.

Aside from her work at tech firms, Sandberg is the author of “Lean In,” a best-selling memoir presented as a modern feminist manifesto that urges women to work to succeed in juggling their careers and family life.

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