A court acquitted police officers and 119 paramedics who faced trial after a drunk individual died from asphyxiation while a towel was placed in their mouth to prevent self-harm.

Changwon District Court Criminal Division 4 (Presiding Judge Oh Dae-seok) announced on the 3rd that it found police officers A and two others, as well as firefighters B and two others, not guilty of charges of occupational negligence resulting in death. In this citizen participatory trial, all seven jurors unanimously ruled in favor of acquitting the defendants.

According to the ruling, the incident began around 1:58 a.m. on August 26, 2022, on a road in Geoje City, Gyeongnam. Police officers who responded to a report of “a woman lying on the road” urged a heavily intoxicated woman in her 40s, identified as C, to return home. However, C rambled incoherently, struck the officers, and resisted fiercely. Eventually, at around 2:08 a.m., the police arrested C on charges of obstruction of official duties and handcuffed her.

Afterward, C lay on the floor and banged her head, causing a disturbance. When her request to remove the handcuffs was denied, she attempted self-harm, saying, “I should bite my tongue and die.”

In a desperate attempt, the police quickly inserted their fingers into C’s mouth and sustained injuries from being bitten. As C’s resistance intensified, the officers inserted a towel obtained from a nearby convenience store into her mouth to barely prevent her from biting her tongue.

Paramedics B and two others, who arrived after receiving a joint response request, maintained the towel in C’s mouth while checking her pulse, following the police’s opinion that “removing the towel might lead to further self-harm.”

C later entered cardiac arrest and died from airway obstruction asphyxia while receiving treatment at a hospital on September 17 of the same year.

The prosecution indicted the public officials, arguing that their “occupational negligence” stemmed from failing to properly monitor C’s breathing and not immediately removing the towel from her mouth.

However, the court’s judgment differed. Regarding the police officers, the court stated, “The intoxicated victim exhibited sudden and dangerous behavior, such as attempting to bite her tongue, creating an urgent situation where serious harm to life could occur at any moment. The measure of placing a towel in her mouth to swiftly and effectively stop self-harm cannot be deemed a significant deviation from the discretion granted to the officers.” It further noted, “It would have been difficult to immediately distinguish on-site whether the victim’s reduced resistance was due to asphyxiation or psychological stabilization from resignation.”

The court also acquitted the paramedics. It ruled, “The paramedics, who arrived late, had no choice but to follow the instructions and information from the police who were controlling the scene,” and did not recognize a violation of their duty of care. Notably, the court cited medical experts’ evaluations as a key basis for the acquittal, stating, “Even doctors with professional medical knowledge, if deployed to the scene at the time, would have found it difficult to immediately decide to remove the towel and secure the victim’s airway.”