The head of a suicide-prevention body has called on mall operators to take more steps to stop people leaping from high points.
At the very least, Paul Yip Siu-fai says, operators should not make it any easier for would-be suicides. Yip, director of the Hong Kong Jockey Club Centre for Suicide Research and Prevention, said he had been surprised to see several chairs placed along a seventh-floor barrier in a shopping centre in Sham Shui Po from where a mother hurled her four-year-old daughter into its atrium on Sunday before jumping after her.
The girl survived after being caught by a net extending from the third floor, but the mother died.
'One of the most important measures to prevent suicide is making hot spots more difficult to access,' Yip said.
Measures could include installing barriers where none existed or making existing ones higher, he said.
Sunday's tragedy was not the first at the Dragon Centre in Sham Shui Po. A 58-year-old man plunged to his death from the fourth floor of the shopping mall in July.
