SEOUL — A court in South Korea found the former police chief of the capital Seoul and two other officers not guilty over a botched response to a Halloween crowd crush that killed nearly 160 people in 2022.
The verdict of the Seoul Western District Court drew angry responses from grieving relatives and their advocates, who accused the tribunal of refusing to hold high-level officials accountable for an incident largely blamed on a lack of disaster planning and inadequate emergency response.
Some experts have called the crush a 'manmade disaster' that could have been prevented with relatively simple steps like employing more police and public workers to monitor bottleneck points, enforcing one-way walking lanes and blocking narrow pathways.The Seoul court acquitted Kim of professional negligence, saying prosecutors failed to prove that he had violated his duties or to establish a connection between his conduct and the high death toll and injuries.
Ex-Police Chief Acquitted Over Deadly Crowd Crush
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