A four-year-old girl survived a fall from a Hong Kong shopping mall balcony when her mother leaped to her death, in the latest in a string of murder-suicide attempts, police said Monday. The young girl was hurled by her 41-year-old mother from the mall's seventh floor on Sunday afternoon, but landed in a net below and suffered no serious injuries, police said.
However, the mother crashed through the net - intended to prevent rubbish falling on pedestrians below - and was pronounced dead at the scene. Media reports said horrified onlookers screamed as the girl - suspended four storeys above the ground - began climbing near the hole left by her mother's fall.
But the kindergarten pupil managed to climb to safety with the help of a shopper at the mall in Sham Shui Po, a low-income neighbourhood in the city's Kowloon district, reports said. The family had been eating lunch at the mall, and some reports said there was a heated argument between the child's parents shortly before the incident.