Police have booked a vendor who was selling household goods inside a commercial building in Daegu's Buk District, where a ceiling collapse injured 38 people, including older adults. Investigators are looking into whether the vendor violated safety management obligations and whether earlier ceiling repair work was poorly executed.
The Daegu Metropolitan Police Agency's dedicated investigation team booked a vendor identified only as A on charges of causing injury through professional negligence, police said on the 12th. A had leased the space on the building's second floor and operated a promotional showroom selling household necessities and other goods to older customers. Police believe A failed to meet safety management obligations, including a failure to properly direct customers to evacuate as the ceiling gave way. "We booked the operator after concluding that the business violated its duty to ensure customer safety," a police official said.
An investigation into the cause of the collapse is also under way. In a joint forensic examination a day earlier, police confirmed that the ceiling frame and the finishing material had come down together, and they secured security camera footage recorded at the time of the accident. The footage reportedly shows ceiling finishing material falling first above a stage to the left of the second-floor entrance, after which the collapse spread. Police are examining a range of possibilities, including deterioration of the structure.
In interviews with witnesses, police also obtained statements that ceiling repair work had been carried out in the past. The second floor had been used as a billiard hall for several years, and repair work is believed to have been done after the operator changed in 2019. The former billiard hall operator reportedly told police that the ceiling structure at the time of the accident differed from what it had been during their tenure. Police plan to identify the subsequent operator to determine the exact timing of the work and the contractor involved.
On the morning of the 10th, ceiling finishing material gave way on the second floor of a commercial building in Gwaneum-dong, Buk District, Daegu, leaving 38 people with minor injuries. Nine of them were taken to hospitals.