Other parents who have left children in the past (this won't be the first case!) must now be feeling that they are very lucky that it didn't happen to them.

Ah, no. For something not to happen to you which has an extremely low probability you don't have to be lucky. If I read about that poor gal who was killed some years ago by a suicider jumping from a tower I don't think how lucky I was that it didn't happen to me, I rather think how unlucky she was.

Wolfgang