Maid in Sharjah dies cleaning windows

A young maid plunged to her death while trying to clean a window on the 23rd floor of a 26 floor apartment block.

Eyewitnesses said they saw her leaning out just minutes before she fell from the high-rise tower in Sharjah.

Police said the Ethiopian woman, in her early twenties, was trying to clean the exterior of a pane about 5pm on Friday when she slipped. She was found in front of the Queen Tower building, overlooking Qanat Al Qasba.

“I saw her cleaning the windows and suddenly I heard something hit the ground. When I checked, it was the maid in a pool of blood,” said Waleed Ahmed, a security guard at adjacent Al Noor Tower. He added he had seen the maid leaning out the window before but had never had a chance to warn her it was dangerous.

The woman was already dead when officers from Al Buheira Police Station arrived at the scene. Her body was taken to Al Qassimi Hospital.

Sharjah Police have questioned the maid’s employers and ruled out foul play.

“Investigations are still ongoing. Our position at the moment is that it was an accident,” an official said.

The maid’s employers, who were at home at the time, were too upset to talk about the accident. However, they did say that they were not aware that the maid cleaned the exterior of the windows. They said they would have warned her not to had they known about it.

Meanwhile, police in Dubai were investigating the death of another fall victim. Sources at Dubai Police said the man fell to his death in Motor City about 9.30am from the Newbridge Hill 2 building.

“We received a call about a man who fell from a building in Dubai Motor City and our officers rushed to the scene,” a source said last night. “We are still investigating.”

A security guard said police cordoned off the area for two hours.