Exactly, similar to Brian's question,
why would this mother risk her own son's life just to blackmail her ex-husband?This is indeed a very sad family tragedy. Like what sonam dhargey said:
What we read and see on the surface does not really mean it is true. How and why such a person reacts in such a way we cannot be the judge as we are not there and the one who truly understands...
How can we judge when we don't know what this woman went through as a wife to her ex-husband and a daughter in-law to this family?
Who knows, she maybe suffered from emotional torture or she is a person with mental disorder...
When I was very young, my uncle married a woman from a foreign land who has a family history of mental disorder (which we only found out after the marriage). Soon after her 5th child was born, she was sent to asylum for mental problems. My mother told me that part of the reason my uncle's wife became insane was my uncle's attitude towards her. She was never really recover until her death some 20 years later.
My uncle is not a bad person but as a man at that time, he never show respect to his wife and always subject her to emotional tortures; and he also never bother to help her with house chores or tending to the children even during her maternity period. He behaved like a 'normal' Asian man i.e. king of the house.
This may or may not be the case for this woman, my point is, no one really know their problems.
From Buddhist point of view, sufferings spurs mainly from our ignorance, anger, hatred and also our attachment to impermanent things.
..If this troubled family knew how to be less attached with their emotions and what not, this will not have happen in the first place.
Brian is right, if only they knew how to handle their emotions and be less attached, then this tragedy can be avoided.
The only consolation we can find from this tragedy is that, the 6-year-old boy proven to be a heroic selfless child, his act to save his mother is equivalent to an action by a bodhisattva.