Through a 20cm Window... 10 Foreigners Arrested for Gambling Charges Escape Together from Police Substation

No CCTV and No Surveillance Personnel Deployed
Delayed Detection of Escape... Investigation Underway on Negligence

An incident occurred in which 10 foreigners arrested on gambling charges collectively escaped from the district police station meeting room while awaiting investigation. At the time, the police had not handcuffed them.

According to a report by Yonhap News on the 11th, in the early morning at the Wolgok District Police Station meeting room in Gwangsan-gu, Gwangju, 10 Vietnamese gambling suspects escaped through a window gap that opened about 20 cm. Earlier, around 3 a.m. that day, the police received a 112 report stating "foreigners are gathering to gamble" and arrested a total of 23 Vietnamese at a residential area in Wolgok-dong, Gwangsan-gu.

The police did not handcuff the Vietnamese suspects as they complied well without significant resistance during the arrest and transfer process. Afterwards, all of them were voluntarily brought to the Wolgok District Police Station and were first made to wait in the spacious meeting room for basic identity verification and preliminary investigation. This meeting room had a system window for air circulation that could be pushed open about 15 degrees outward, but there were no bars installed on the window to prevent suspect escape. Also, since the meeting room was a police work area rather than a suspect management facility, there was no surveillance closed-circuit television (CCTV) installed.

On the morning of the 11th, 10 foreigners arrested on gambling charges escaped collectively from the Wolgok Police Substation in Gwangsan-gu, Gwangju. The photo shows the window through which the foreigners escaped.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

At the time, about 10 police officers, including one team on duty at the district police station and detectives who came to support, were working at the Wolgok District Police Station. However, the police did not assign monitoring personnel inside the meeting room and instead called suspects out one by one to check their identities, gambling methods, and the scale of gambling funds. Due to language barriers and the large number of suspects, the investigation proceeded in a chaotic atmosphere.

Meanwhile, when one of the suspects waiting attempted and succeeded in slipping their head and body through the window gap, the remaining nine also escaped from the meeting room using the same method.

Although the police managed the suspects by moving between the investigation space and the meeting room, they did not check the number of detainees inside the meeting room, and only realized the collective escape around 6:40 a.m., after a significant number had fled.

The Vietnamese individuals arrested on gambling charges that day included both illegal and legal residents. Of the 10 who escaped, six were illegal residents and four were legal residents. It is presumed that they fled due to fear of forced deportation resulting from criminal charges. The police have identified all their identities and are tracking them mainly around their residences. Additionally, an investigation is underway into whether the on-site police officers were negligent in surveillance or violated suspect management guidelines.

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