Heartbroken woman committs suicide by jumping from 148th floor of world’s tallest building

A heartbroken woman committed suicide following a love split – by jumping from the world's tallest building.

Laura Vanessa Nunes lept from the 148th floor of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai after splitting up from her wealthy boyfriend.

Ms Nunes, 39, allegedly ended her life due to a rocky on-off relationship with the Emirati businessman.

Now her mother is speaking out about the tragedy after news about the suicide was reportedly supressed by Emirate authorities, where public information is tightly controlled.

Leona Sykes, from South Africa, travelled to Dubai to seek answers about her daughter's death, which happened last November, the Mail Online reports.

Ms Sykes told the Mail Online that she couldn't believe how easily her daughter could jump from the building, which is a major tourist attraction with supposedly modern safety features.

Now she claims that Emaar, the property group behind the 2,700ft high Burj Khalifa, has refused to return her requests for information about the death.

Eventually she managed to persuade Dubai police to show her CCTV footage taken from the deck of the building floor, which apparently shows Ms Nunes slipping through a small gap designed to allow tourists to look out and take photographs.

The footage shows her initially putting her head through the gap before rushing back to the observation deck.

"I think she got a fright when she looked down. She was a panicky, terrified young woman," Ms Sykes told the Mail Online.

"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."

Talking about her daughter's relationship, Ms Sykes said: "She was besotted with him. But he didn't love her as much as she loved him."

After falling 1,640ft, Ms Nunes' body was found on the third floor Amal restaurant, part of the Armani hotel – which, on a Sunday afternoon, would have been packed with tourists.

Photos of the At The Top observation deck taken before and after Ms Nunes' death appear to show a new rail that has been installed after the suicide, which suggests Emaar group has tightened its safety procedures.

But Ms Sykes said Emaar Properties should already have been aware of the risk of suicides, after an Indian man jumped to his death from the 147th floor of the Burj Khalifa in 2011.

"It's horrifying," she told the Mail Online.

"My daughter unfortunately wanted to kill herself. But it should not have been possible for someone to do that. How can you have a top tourist attraction where that's possible?"

Ms Sykes claimed the company refused to answer any of her questions about her daughter's death or the safety of the Burj Khalifa's observation deck.

She said: "I sent messages on their website. My ex-husband phoned and they weren't prepared to speak to him."

The devastated mother said her daughter was so distraught about the collapse of her relationship, which began in 2011, that she was driven to take her own life.

Ms Sykes told the Mail Online that she believed her daughter, who held South African and Portuguese citizenship, was to meet her boyfriend two nights before her death.

Now Ms Sykes fears that clues about her daughter's decision to end her own life may have gone missing after a BlackBerry mobile phone recovered from Ms Nunes' body was returned to her mother without its SIM card or memory card.

Any messages sent before Ms Nunes' death as she contemplated suicide would have been stored on the SIM or memory card.

Ms Nunes travelled to the Middle East before converting to Islam and adopting the name Noora.

Ms Sykes said her daughter was "good-hearted" but 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," she said.

Emaar Properties has not responded to requests for comment.