Reason for 'Not Guilty' Verdict of a 20s Man Who Hit and Killed a 1-Year-Old Alone in a Parking Lot

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[Asia Economy Reporter Hwang Sumi] A man in his 20s who fatally struck a 12-month-old child sitting on the floor of a villa parking lot with his car was acquitted by the court.

According to the court on the 20th, Judge Noh Han-dong of Suwon District Court Criminal Division 12 announced on the 18th that he had acquitted A, a man in his 20s, who was charged with violating the Special Act on Traffic Accident Handling (causing death).

A was charged with causing the death of the victim child by hitting the child, who was sitting on the floor of a ground-level parking lot of a villa in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, with the front bumper of his vehicle while entering the parking lot at around 6:25 p.m. on April 7 last year. Just before the accident, the vehicle was traveling at 15 km/h, and the victim child was found to have been involved in the accident while the mother briefly went to a nearby trash bin.

The prosecution argued that A should have slowed down as much as possible or stopped briefly to check for people when entering the parking lot, but neglected to do so, causing the accident, and thus brought him to trial.

However, the court's judgment was different. The court stated, "It is difficult for a driver to foresee that a child under the age of one would be alone in the parking lot." Since it was highly likely from the driver's perspective that no one was present when entering the parking lot, the facts of this case correspond to a situation where there is no proof of the crime.

The court added, "At the time of the accident, the victim's sitting height was lower than 49.86 cm (the average sitting height of boys aged 12 to 18 months is 49.856 cm), so it cannot be concluded that the driver neglected to pay attention to the front."

Furthermore, the court said, "The speed of A's vehicle when entering the parking lot was 9 km/h, which, considering the situation and structure of the parking lot where the accident occurred, is not likely to have posed a high risk or hazard to others," and added, "It cannot be said that accelerating to 15 km/h just before the accident to enter deeper into the parking lot was wrong."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.