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Double tragedy: Bodies handed over to family

The grief-stricken father, whose six-year-old son and 33-year-old wife plunged to death on Tuesday from the window in a building in JLT, received the bodies after returning from Iran

“The Dubai Police have notified the man of the terrible incident. He flew in from Iran to Dubai and received the corpses of his son and wife,” Director of the General Department of Criminal Investigation (CID) at the Dubai Police, Brigadier Khalil Ibrahim Al Mansouri, told Khaleej Times on Wednesday.

The Operations Room of the Dubai Police was alerted on Tuesday morning that a boy and his mother, both Iranian, were lying in a pool of blood after plunging to death in front of the parking facility of a 36-storeyed JLT residential building. Police investigations proved that the mother, who was waiting for the school bus with her daughter, 15, left her young son unattended in their apartment on the 8^th floor. “The mother’s negligence can be mainly blamed for the tragic incident,” he said.

The mother, according to an eyewitness, even pushed herself out of the narrow window and plunged to the ground. She fell on the body of her dying and bleeding son and at the feet of her weeping daughter. Brigadier Al Mansouri said most of the fatal plunge cases in Dubai are reported in under construction buildings rather than residential buildings. “Ignoring safety measures is the main reason behind such cases.”

Brigadier Al Mansouri then urged parents to be more cautious and keep the doors of balconies closed and never leave their children unattended.

Meanwhile, the Dubai Municipality conducted a preliminary investigation into the incident after it was alerted about the deaths, an official said.

Marwan Al Mohammed, the head of the Engineering Supervision Section of the municipality’s Building Department said a technical report was prepared after the investigation. However, he did not divulge the details of the report.

“We will hand it over to the Public Prosecution as we do in all accident cases. However, the property does not come under the municipality’s jurisdiction and we cannot comment about the safety situation there,” he said.

Eerie silence prevails

An eerie silence prevailed around MAG 214 building a day after the tragic incident struck the area.

Flat No. 809 of the building, where the family lived, has been sealed by the police, and the rest of the family — the 15-year-old daughter and her father— are currently living with relatives.

According to sources close to the family, the teenaged girl who helplessly saw her brother and mother fall to death is still in a state of shock and so are the family members and neighbours.

When the KT team visited the building on Wednesday, cleaning crew were busy wiping out the marks of the incident, but the blood stains on the ground floor outside the entrance to the building were still visible.

Though people in the vicinity are going about their normal routines, a hushed silence prevailing in the area is a testimony to the state of shock the residents are still in.

An Indian security guard has replaced the guard who was injured in the incident, while trying to catch the falling boy on Tuesday. When asked about his colleague, he reluctantly said: “He has been discharged from the hospital after treatment and is now at his accommodation.”

Around 2.30 on Wednesday afternoon, several mothers were down at the entrance to the building to pick their kids from their school buses. However, none but one had the strength to discuss the gory incident in front of their little ones.

“We all have children who are about the same age as the boy and nobody would want such a cruel thing to happen to anyone, least of all to little children. Whatever happened is really terrible,” said a Filipina mother of two, who refused to give her name.

The Iranian consulate officials in Dubai were unaware of the incident when the KT team approached them for comments. “We have no information about any death of Iranian citizens in Dubai over the last two days. Normally in such cases the police inform us after identifying the nationality of the victims but so far we haven’t received any report,” said a consulate official.

shafaat@khaleejtimes.com, ahmedshaaban@khaleejtimes.com