Girl, 4, thrown from Hong Kong shopping mall by suicidal mother

Feb 8, 2010, 3:44 GMT

Hong Kong - A 4-year-old girl was recovering Monday after being thrown from the seventh floor of a Hong Kong shopping mall by her mother who then jumped to her death.

The girl's fall was broken by safety nets three floors below the interior balcony she was hurled from while her mother plunged through the nets and died on the mall's ground floor.

Horrified witnesses watched as the girl clambered along the safety net past the hole her mother had fallen through before being helped to safety on a fourth-floor balcony by a shopper.

The incident took place Sunday in the Dragon shopping mall in Hong Kong's Sham Shui Po district, apparently after an argument over the girl's schooling between the woman and her husband.

Witnesses saw the couple rowing outside a restaurant where they had lunch with the girl before the woman threw her daughter over the balcony and then jumped after her.

The 41-year-old mother was declared dead at the scene while the girl was shocked but otherwise unhurt. A police spokesman said the case was being treated as attempted murder-suicide.

The safety nets that saved the girl's life were put in place after a 41-year-old man jumped to his death from the upper floors of the mall in 2009.

The incident is the latest in a number of murder-suicides involving children in Hong Kong in recent months.

On February 3, a mother jumped to her death with her 2-month-old boy from a high-rise apartment block in the city's Tseun Wan district.

In December, a mother killed herself and her 6-year-old daughter by burning charcoal, which emits toxic fumes, and in October, two children aged 13 and 12 were killed by their mother using the same method. The mother survived.