A domestic worker accidentally killed herself with a jumping rope in an apartment in Parc Centros in Punggol Central. Photo: Google Maps
A domestic worker accidentally killed herself with a jumping rope in an apartment in Parc Centros in Punggol Central. Photo: Google Maps

A Singapore Coroner’s Court ruled on Wednesday that a Filipino maid had no intention of dying when she pretended to hang herself in a prank to scare her boyfriend in December last year.

Jovylyn La Torre Rue, 39, died in her employer’s home in an accidental death, the court ruled.

Based on the environmental evidence and mobile phone messages between Rue and her friends and sisters, the maid had no intention to commit suicide, said Singapore state coroner Marvin Bay said on Wednesday.

Rue had probably suffocated after winding the rope around her neck, the coroner said, adding that the fatal prank was an accident.

Rue, who started working in Singapore in 2012, had told her boyfriend that she would commit suicide if he did not love her, the Chinese- language Lianhe Zaobao reported on Wednesday. 

She also told her friends she was not actually going to hang herself and she knew “a safe way” to stage her hanging with a jump rope on a door.

On December 11, Rue pretended to hang herself in her bedroom in Parc Centros, Punggol Central, but accidentally died of suffocation, Channel NewsAsia reported. Her employer found her body.

Rue, whose five children were cared for by her husband in the Philippines, planned to attend her daughter’s wedding there 10 days later. 

During the investigation, officers found that Rue had met her ex-boyfriend in a Singapore hotel several hours before her death.

When Rue later threatened to commit suicide, her current boyfriend, who was in tears, called her friends for help, but they told him it was a prank.

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