SEOUL, South Korea– A South Korean court on Monday sentenced the previous cops chief of a district of Seoul to 3 years in jail for a messed up reaction to a lethal Halloween crowd crush in the capital's Itaewon night life district in 2022.
Yongsan police headquarters chief Lee Im-jae is the very first senior cops main to be founded guilty over the crush, which resulted in 159 deaths almost 2 years earlier.
Lee had actually stopped working to get ready for a mass Halloween event whose risks he need to have visualized, therefore developing the conditions for the Itaewon disaster, the Seoul Western District Court stated in a declaration.
The Itaewon deaths stunned a country still scarred by the 2014 sinking of a ferryboat, the Sewol, that eliminated 304 individuals consisting of 250 kids on a school journey.
2 other previous Yongsan authorities were handed a two-year prison term and a 1 year jail term suspended for 2 years, respectively.
The court stated the crowd crush was a “manufactured catastrophe” that might have either been avoided or the effect considerably lowered if the implicated had actually satisfied their tasks.
Speaking with the Yonhap news company ahead of the judgment, Lee's attorney stated it was “exceedingly extreme” to anticipate his customer to have actually gotten ready for something that no one might have anticipated.
Park Hee-young, the Yongsan district workplace chief, together with 3 other district authorities were discovered not guilty of stopping working to properly react to the crush. The court stated they had actually not been straight accountable for crowd control.
At a press conference ahead of the judgment, family members of the victims had actually required both Lee and Park to be held liable.
Because the catastrophe, family members have actually required the penalty of senior authorities, consisting of Minister of the Interior and Safety Lee Sang-min. The constitutional court ruled versus a parliamentary vote to impeach the minister in 2015.
District attorneys had actually looked for seven-year prison terms for both Park and Lee, according to media. Previously this year, parliament passed an expense backed by the judgment and opposition celebrations to introduce a fresh examination into the Halloween crush.
Reuters
