Murder-suicides on bridge fail to bring action

Jason Lees. Photo / Facebook

Brisbane City Council is resisting renewed calls to improve safety rails on the city's Story Bridge despite two murder-suicides involving children in the past five months.

But while Lord Mayor Graham Quirk repeated the council's argument that engineering solutions were not practical, he said yesterday that emergency telephones and warning signs would be installed.

Early on Monday morning Canadian-born Anglican schoolteacher and rugby referee Jason Lees, 40, threw his 2-year-old son Brad off the bridge before jumping to his own death in a tragedy marked by "blood-curdling screams".

Last September Brisbane woman Kim Patterson, 48, jumped from the bridge after killing her 14-year-old daughter Sidonie with an axe, and leaving her son Hugo, 12, in the car as she fell to her death.

An average of four people a year reportedly kill themselves on the bridge, and eight years ago the Australian Institute of Suicide Prevention and Research recommended anti-suicide measures, including a cage enclosing the walkway.

On Monday morning Lees, who taught at the Anglican Church Grammar School - where Brad was a preschooler - drove from his home in the southeastern suburb of Seven Hills to Kangaroo Pt, where the 74m-high Story Bridge crosses the Brisbane River to Fortitude Valley.

He left his car, strapped his son into the baby seat on his bicycle and rode onto the bridge before throwing the boy into the river and leaping after him.

Witness Craig Cooper told Fairfax media he had watched in horror from his nearby balcony.

"I just heard this scream. It was blood-curdling. I don't think I could describe it, it was unbelievable.

"I caught a glimpse of a falling thing, it was tiny. A few seconds later he [Lees] jumped. It was unmistakable this time that it was a body."

Fairfax reported that Lees was believed to have recently separated from his psychologist wife, Danielle.

Neighbours told News Ltd that the family had appeared to be happy.

"He was a lovely boy," one said of the dead toddler. "He would wave to you if you saw them out the front."

Another said they had been a lovely family: "I guess [Danielle Lees] will just have to try to put her life back together. It's just her now."

Anglican Grammar headmaster Jonathan Hensman told the Courier Mail that Lees had been an outstanding and popular teacher.

"Jason was a highly regarded and much-loved teacher ... [Brad] was a lovely boy and that just adds to the tragedy."