Karma?

I got a call last night from a friend letting me know that a mutual friend of ours has just lost her partner to a heart attack, while sleeping in bed beside her.
He was 36.
No apparent ill health, he drank and smoked but not to excess and no where near the way my Hong Kong friends do, he was feeling a bit 'iffy' the day before but put that down to a few to many glasses of beer the night before. Spent the day pottering around doing the usual things, went out for dinner with my friend and her parents (who were visiting them for the week from overseas) then had an early night.
While I feel terrible for my friend I also feel a little guilty that my first thoughts were "at least he wont beat her anymore". It was one of those relationships that you just have to stand and watch but hope you are around to pick up the pieces, they had been together for 4 years and when I last saw her earlier this year she told me how she desperately wanted to leave him, but neither of them could afford to buy the other one out of their mortgage. He had thrown her out into the street many a late night with no keys, money or phone. She actually regularly hid some money in a plastic purse under a rock in the garden so that she wouldn't have to sleep on the doorstep. He also slapped and pushed her around at times. But she always went back to him.
And now, I know she is racked with guilt and sorrow.