Tai Kok Tsui in Kowloon. Photo: Google Maps
Tai Kok Tsui in Kowloon. Photo: Google Maps

Police are investigating a suspected murder and suicide after a 44-year-old woman and her 7-year-old daughter were found dead in their home in Kowloon’s Tai Kok Tsui on Tuesday.

At 6:31pm, a 28-year-old domestic worker called police and reported an odd smell coming from an apartment at Shining Heights on 83 Sycamore Street in Tak Kok Tsui, according to a government release.

Firemen broke into the apartment and found the woman and the girl lying unconscious inside the bedroom. A basin with burned charcoal was found inside the room.

The woman and the girl were pronounced dead at the scene. Officers said they believed they had died about a week earlier.

The woman, a single mother who worked at a medical clinic, arranged for her domestic worker to go home for a holiday as she and her daughter were due to go overseas, Apple Daily reported.

The maid returned to Hong Kong two days earlier, but could not contact the woman and assumed the mother and daughter were still overseas. On Tuesday night, the maid went to the apartment and called police when she noticed a strange smell coming from the flat.

Officers found a suicide note in the apartment and believe the the woman just broken up with her boyfriend. There had been similar tragedies in Hong Kong in which parents committed suicide with their children.

Last month, a 35-year-old single mother, who was believed to be suffering from postpartum depression, threw her two-year-old son from their flat in Yau Tong Estate in Kwun Tong.

The Samaritans run a 24-hour multilingual suicide prevention hotline +852 2896 0000 or emails can be sent to jo@samaritans.org.hk.

Read: Murder-suicide leaves mother dead, son in critical condition

11 replies on “Mother and daughter, 7, die in suspected murder-suicide”

Comments are closed.