A South Korean court acquitted the former Seoul police chief and two officers Thursday of professional negligence over a deadly 2022 Halloween crowd crush that killed more than 150 people, an official told AFP.
The court ruled that Kim Kwang-ho — the highest-ranking police official indicted over the crush — could not be legally held accountable for the tragedy, citing a lack of evidence to establish that his neglect of duty led to the accident.
“It is hard to establish beyond reasonable doubt, with the evidence put forward by the prosecution, that the defendants committed professional negligence,” the Seoul Western District Court ruled, Yonhap reported.
Two other police officers were acquitted alongside him on the same charges.
As the verdict was read out, shouts of protest erupted from the families of the victims in the courtroom asking: “How was it not a man-made disaster?” Yonhap reported.
Blood tainted shoes retrieved by police from the scene of a fatal Halloween crowd surge that killed more than 150 people in the Itaewon district are displayed at a gymnasium for relatives of victims to collect, in Seoul on November 1, 2022. – At least 156 mostly young people were killed, and scores more injured, in a deadly crowd surge late October 29 at the first post-pandemic Halloween party in Seoul’s popular Itaewon nightlife district. (Photo by Anthony WALLACE / AFP)
Mourners pay tributes at a makeshift memorial for the victims of the deadly Halloween crowd surge, outside a subway station in the district of Itaewon in Seoul on November 1, 2022. (Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP)
Flowers are laid at the scene of a Halloween stampede in the capital’s popular Itaewon district in Seoul on October 30, 2022. More than 150 people were killed and scores more injured in a stampede at a packed Halloween event in central Seoul late on October 29, officials said, in one of South Korea’s worst peacetime accidents.
(Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP)
The court acknowledged that the number of casualties could have been reduced had “even a small police force in charge of maintaining order in Itaewon” been dispatched on the night of the Halloween weekend.
“We cannot help but express not only disappointment but also deep regret, as it appears that the government’s functions regarding social disasters did not work properly on the night of the crush,” the verdict said.
Tens of thousands of people — mostly in their 20s and 30s — had been out on October 29, 2022, to enjoy the first post-pandemic Halloween celebrations in Seoul’s popular Itaewon nightlife district.
But the night turned deadly when people poured into a narrow, sloping alleyway between bars and clubs, the weight of their bodies and a lack of effective crowd control leading to scores being crushed to death.
The prosecution had sought a five-year term for the ex-Seoul police chief, who denied any wrongdoing, telling the court in April: “Instead of seeking a scapegoat, real preventive measures should be carried out.”
The Thursday ruling followed an earlier conviction of lower-level police officials, including a three-year sentence for a former police chief of Yongsan — the district overseeing Itaewon.
South Korea’s Interior Minister Lee Sang-min bows (C) during a parliamentary session over the deadly Halloween crowd surge, at the National Assembly in Seoul on November 1, 2022. (Photo by – / YONHAP / AFP)
South Korea’s National Police Agency Commissioner Yoon Hee-keun (C) bows during a press conference on the deadly Halloween crowd surge, at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency in Seoul on November 1, 2022. (Photo by – / YONHAP / AFP)
The body of a victim of a Halloween crush, which left at least 120 people dead, is transported on a stretcher into an ambulance in the district of Itaewon in Seoul on October 30, 2022. (Photo by Jung Yeon-je / AFP)
In contrast to the acquittal, the same court found the former Yongsan police chief Lee Im-jae guilty of failing to prevent the “foreseeable” disaster.
“It was foreseeable that there would be a large crowd of people in the sloped alley of Itaewon that would lead to serious danger to life and physical safety on the Halloween weekend in 2022,” the court said in the guilty verdict on September 30.
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