Secret torment of expat mum who jumped to death
A BRITISH businessman’s wife jumped 250ft to her death from the their luxury apartment after they began a new life in China.
Gill Smith, 44, had seemed happy after setting up home in Shanghai with managing director husband Peter and their two young sons.
But she had ‘got herself in a hole’ with a problem which she thought was unresolvable and kept it to herself, an inquest heard. In July last year Mrs Smith, formerly of Bramhall, near Manchester, fell 38 floors from the balcony of the family home near the Huangpu River after sending her sons to have lunch with their father.
The inquest in Stockport was not given details of what had been on her mind.
She suffered multiple injuries and was found in the apartment complex grounds.
She left a note with the passcode for her phone and a draft email was found saying she was sorry for her actions.
Mr Smith said his wife seemed quiet in the weeks before her death – on one day being unable to get out of bed.
The family were due to fly to Spain for the beginning of the children’s summer holiday followed by a trip back to Britain to visit family.
Mr Smith, who was managing director of recruitment firm Michael Page China, told the hearing: ‘I knew she wasn’t her normal self over the two weeks prior to her death.
‘I did specifically ask her three times what was wrong and I sat with her and asked what’s going on, it’s not right. And she said nothing was going on.’
He added: ‘Gill had never talked about doing anything like this, but weirdly enough there had been a few suicides in Shanghai over the last year and it had been a topic of conversation at a barbecue we were at four weeks before.
‘She just got herself into a hole and I don’t think she meant it. I think it was just a moment of madness.’
After the tragedy police
‘A moment of madness’
found Mrs Smith’s phone and a note with passcodes written down. This led them to uncover a draft email explaining her reasons and how she was sorry.
Coroner Alison Mutch noted that ‘for reasons not entirely clear’ Mrs Smith felt the situation was ‘not resolvable’.
‘Given how close she was to her family... one of the tragic features of this particular case that she didn’t speak to any of her family about what was in her mind,’ she said.
Recording Mrs Smith’s death as suicide, the coroner said: ‘It’s difficult to understand what was going through her mind at the time, she clearly didn’t want to talk about it.’
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