and his distraught mother committed suicide moments later by jumping from the same window.
The incident happened at the Jumeirah Lake Towers in Dubai where the family had been living.
Brigadier Khalil Ebrahim Al Mansouri, director of Dubai Police’s Criminal Investigation Department, told Gulf News the 33-year-old mother was waiting with her daughter for the school bus in front of the apartment house and left her son unattended in the apartment.
While mother and daughter were waiting, some people near the building spotted the boy dangling from the window and started screaming.
A security guard who saw this happen yelled at the boy to go back inside, by which time the mother was rushing upstairs to pull her son in.
She arrived too late. She rushed downstairs again to find her son dying. Upon seeing this, she became hysterical and rushed back up to her apartment where she jumped out of the window. The mother died instantly on hitting the pavement, police said, but the boy survived a little longer.
The security guard tried to catch the falling boy. He was injured and hospitalized. Dubai police praised Tin Aung Win, 30, from Myanmar for putting his own life at risk trying to save the boy. He succeeded in cushioning the boy’s fall but suffered minor bruises, a head injury that required a few stitches and compression of the spine, Gulf News said.
The father was in Iran at the time of tragedy. The 14-year-old daughter, who saw her brother and mother tumble out of the window and die literally at her feet, was turned over to her relatives in Dubai until her father’s return.
Mohammad Hassan, an Egyptian engineer and a neighbor of the family, told Gulf News he heard a loud thud and hysterical scream at around 7a.m. When he came out from his apartment, he saw the mother running and yelling “disastrous day” (in Arabic) repeatedly.
Hassan took the next elevator and came down to find the five-year-old boy lying in a pool of blood with his 14-year-old sister beside him.
“The sister was sobbing bitterly and holding the boy’s hand. He was badly injured but still alive…. She was wearing a blue-black uniform and head scarf, and had blood all over her dress.”
According to him, the family was Iranian and had moved into the single bedroom apartment only about one month back.
People gathered below the building pleading with the mother not to jump, as she tried to force herself out the narrow window, witnesses told Gulf News.
A resident in a nearby tower, who witnessed the deaths, said: “Because the opening of the window was so narrow, her legs got caught and she was struggling to free them.
“By this time, several people had gathered below the building and were pleading with the woman not to jump. One of them even ran to fetch a sofa in order to cushion her fall. But the woman freed her leg and jumped. The mother landed atop the boy’s body,” he said.
