Qinuo Van Dyk heard one of her children screaming from an adjacent room at a landmark South Beach hotel, walked into the room and saw her husband jump off the 15th-floor balcony, police said.

Authorities remove three bodies from the roof of the Loews Hotel in South Beach on Miami Beach, Fla., Saturday, May 27, 2006. A man killed his two young children by throwing them off the 15th floor of the hotel and then jumped to his own death, police said. [AP]

She looked over the railing and saw her husband and two young children lying on a mezzanine roof at the Loews Hotel about two floors above the ground.

Dr. Edward Van Dyk, 43, tossed his 4- and 8-year-old sons to their deaths Saturday morning, Miami Beach Police spokesman Bobby Hernandez said. Authorities did not release the boys' names.

Qinuo Van Dyk, 40, told police she and her husband had been having marital problems for the past six months, but hadn't argued right before the incident, Hernandez said.

Despite the marital problems, he said, the Alton, Ill., family had been celebrating the couple's 10th wedding anniversary.

"It's unfortunate that this gentleman was so selfish and in an effort to get back at his wife he took the two most loved people in the world away from her," Hernandez said.

He said the woman did not know why her husband, a radiation oncologist at Alton Memorial Hospital, killed the children and himself.

Edward Van Dyk became head of the hospital's cancer center 18 months ago after the family moved from New Mexico, hospital officials said.

"We are shocked and saddened by this tragedy and we offer our deepest sympathy to Mrs. Van Dyk and her family," hospital spokesman Rob Shelton said.

Other doctors at the hospital described Edward Van Dyk as quiet, intelligent and friendly.

Dr. Ed Ragsdale said Van Dyk dealt with patients who had severe forms of cancer and their subsequent therapy.

"It's a very stressful job," Ragsdale, chairman of the hospital's department of medical imaging, told The (Alton) Telegraph on Saturday. "It takes a strong person to deal with that kind of disease all the time."

Ragsdale told the newspaper he spoke with Van Dyk on Friday afternoon and that his colleague was not acting unusual but did not mention his trip to Florida.

A Loews Hotel spokeswoman in Miami declined comment.