Court issues arrest warrant for driver involved in fatal car crash in front of Seoul City Hall

An arrest warrant for the 68-year-old driver involved in a car crash near Seoul City Hall on Monday that left nine people dead was lifted by a court on Thursday.

The Seoul District Court rejected the arrest warrant against the driver, surnamed Cha, on the grounds that there were insufficient grounds to believe he would flee or refuse to be questioned by police, according to the Namdaemun Police Station in Seoul.

The police had applied for an arrest warrant the day before.

The arrest warrant has apparently been lifted because Cha is currently in hospital and under close police observation.

On Monday, Cha left the underground parking lot of the Westin Josun Seoul hotel near Seoul City Hall and drove about 200 meters in the wrong direction down a one-way street, hitting guardrails and pedestrians on the sidewalk before colliding with two other vehicles and coming to a stop.

Nine people were killed and seven others injured in this accident.

Cha, whose wife was sitting in the passenger seat at the time, suffered broken ribs. He was released on Tuesday as Bus driver at a city bus company in Ansan, Gyeonggi, with over 40 years of driving experience.

The first set of tests conducted by police did not find that Cha was drunk or under the influence of drugs, but police plan to conduct additional blood tests on him, Chung Yong-woo, a senior police officer at the Namdaemun Police Station, said during a press conference on Tuesday.

A citizen bows Thursday in front of flowers and letters left at the scene of a fatal car crash near Seoul City Hall that killed nine people on Monday. (YONHAP)

Cha allegedly attributed the accident to sudden, unintended acceleration and claimed the car was defective. But even if that were true, the charges against him would not change under the Law on Special Cases in Settlement of Traffic Accidents, Chung said.

Police will conduct their first suspect investigation into Cha on Thursday afternoon. During questioning, police are expected to question Cha about his claims of sudden unintended acceleration and why he entered a one-way street from the wrong direction.

The funerals of the victims of the accident took place on Thursday, after the usual three days of receiving guests in the funeral halls. In Korea, the altars are set up immediately after death and the bodies are buried or cremated three days later.

Of the nine deaths, two were employees of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, four were employees of a nearby bank and three were employees of a company that performed outsourced work for hospitals.

Hundreds of employees from Seoul City Hall, the bank and the outsourcing company attended the funeral procession at Seoul National University Hospital on Thursday and paid their last respects to their colleagues.

The victims’ relatives were in a state of extreme grief. Many of them were crying or could barely stand as the bodies were taken out of the hospital’s funeral hall and transported away in vehicles.

In this image uploaded to an online community site, First Lady Kim Keon Hee is seen laying flowers and reading condolence letters on Wednesday at the scene of the fatal car crash that killed nine people near Seoul City Hall on Monday. (NEWS1)

Earlier on Wednesday, First Lady Kim Keon Hee was seen by passersby laying flowers near the accident site and stopping to read some of the numerous condolence letters sent to the victims and grieving families. The President’s Office had not announced Kim’s visit to the accident site, and it appears she visited on her own initiative.

BY LIM JEONG-WON ([email protected])