FOR over three years, she single-handedly fed and provided for her family after her husband, a 39-year-old Pakistani, became jobless and chose to remain that way.
When the financial burden became too much to bear and seeing her husband of 10 years being complacent with unemployment, Shari Zuraidah Ridzuan, a senior executive at a finance company then aged 31, had had enough.
She filed for divorce with plans to move on with life with the young son and daughter she had with the foreigner.
The couple remained together during the separation process but were often engaged in domestic disputes.
On the evening of June 28, 2012, she received devastating news.
Her husband, Ismail Khan, and their two children, Mohd Faisal, nine, and Aqsa Khan, six, were found dead in a pool of blood by security guards on the ground floor of their condominium in Hulu Langat, Batu 9, Cheras.
The children were still clad in their school uniforms.
Ismail had earlier gone to the 21st floor of the condominium with the children after picking them up from school.
He is said to have pushed the children from the building before taking the plunge himself.
Shari Zuraidah, who was at her mother’s house in Bandar Tun Razak at the time, rushed over to her condominium on being alerted of the incident.
Just seven months earlier, she had lodged a police report when her husband attempted to pull off the same stunt on the same floor of the building.
Apparently, Ismail, whose home renovation business had failed to take off, leaving him without a source of income, was distressed after his wife filed for divorce.
He pestered her to postpone the divorce proceedings until his application for Malaysian permanent residency was approved.
A similar but unrelated case occurred at a luxury condominium in Brickfields three years earlier.
A couple there poisoned their handicapped two-year-old son before jumping to their deaths.
Indian expatriate Manish Dinesh Wadhwani, 34, and his wife Niveditaa Manish Wadhwani, 29, who were depressed about their disabled child, decided to end their lives.
On the morning of May 20, 2010, the couple fed their son Yoganash with a lethal dose of pest-control poison at their rented home and left the dying child in a room.
The couple then stepped out of the unit and jumped off the building together.