Woman Leaps To Her Death From World's Tallest Building in Dubai

A lovesick woman Laura Vanessa Nunes, 39, committed suicide by jumping from the 148th floor of the world's tallest building - the Burj Khalifa in Dubai - after a relationship with a wealthy businessman apparently turnedsour.

And her devastated mother has claimed that Emaar, the property group behind the 2,700ft high Burj Khalifa, has refused to return repeated requests for information about the tragedy.Leona Sykes, from South Africa, travelled to Dubai to seek answers because she can't believe how easily her daughter was able to leap from the major tourist attraction with supposed modern safety features.

She convinced Dubai police to show her the CCTV taken from the observation deck, despite the harrowing nature of the footage.

According to Ms Sykes, the video shows Ms Nunes walk towards the viewing platform's glass security panels and put her head through a small gap designed to allow tourists to look out and take photographs.
She then rushes to the back of the observation deck, apparently in fear.

'I think she got a fright when she looked down. She was a panicky terrified young woman,' said a distraught Ms Sykes. 'She walked back to the pane of glass, turned around and looked up, maybe to get strength or to make a prayer.Then she put her head out, tilted her body and slipped through. And nobody noticed.’ 

After falling 1,640ft, her body was found on the terrace of the 3rd floor Amal restaurant, part of the Armani hotel.Although the Burj Khalifa is a popular attraction among both tourists and those living in Dubai, Ms Nunes' death,has gone unreported until now.The suicide took place on a Sunday afternoon, when the Amal restaurant would typically be packed with guests.

Ms Nunes, a qualified masseuse who was in Dubai on a tourist visa hoping to find work, is understood to have been distraught over an on-off relationship with a wealthy Emirati businessman, who MailOnline is not naming for legal reasons.

The pair met in 2009 and saw each other when Ms Nunes was in Dubai, in between stints working in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

But her love of the Middle East, which led her to convert to Islam and adopt the name Noora, also drew her into a romantic relationship that made her unhappy.Her mum said 

'She was besotted with him. But he didn't love her as much as she loved him.'

She said Ms Nunes was vulnerable, partly due to a facial disfigurement at birth.

'She was born with a bilateral cleft lip and palate, which created a lot of insecurity for her. She was teased as a child. She had surgery to correct it, even in her early 30s.'

 Culled from Mailonline

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