Hong Kong police arrest five in connection to Mirror concert screen collapse

Hong Kong police have arrested five people connected to the collapse of a video screen at boyband Mirror’s concert in July that left dancer Mo Lee Kai-yin facing the possibility of permanent vertebrae and nerve damage.

Four suspects from the concert’s principal contractor Engineering Impact Limited were apprehended, with the South China Morning Post reporting that a business director, two project managers and a technical coordinator from the contractor were arrested. The fifth suspect who was arrested was a senior technician from subcontractor Hip Hing Loong.

The outlet reported that Kowloon West regional crime unit Superintendent Alan Chung accused the contractors of purposefully underreporting the weight of the equipment in order to speed up the approval process, and had even encountered a technical issue several hours before the show itself went forward. “We cannot find any evidence that the company had arranged any authorised person or engineer to inspect or check the LED panel,” he said, adding that the investigation revealed that the contractors had not taken any measures to ensure the equipment met safety standards.

The police found that Engineering Impact Limited had underreported the total weight of the six LCD screens at the show by 63%, claiming that the 4,468.7kg worth of screens had only weighed 1,632.9kg. It was also revealed that the weight of the shows’ speaker sets had been severely underreported, with the contractor claiming that the 5,552kg worth of speaker sets had only weighed 725.7kg.

The superintendent also disclosed that police have been in regular contact with Lee’s family throughout the past three months while investigations were ongoing. Explaining that the dancer faced a long road to recovery, he added: “No matter how many people are arrested by police today, how many people are prosecuted or even convicted by the court in the future, all of the above may not make up for what the injured lost in this incident.”

It was previously reported that the third and fourth sections of Lee’s cervical vertebrae had been dislocated in the accident, which left him unable to move his limbs while also sustaining injuries to his head and lungs. It is unclear if his damaged nerves will grow back, leaving him facing the possibility of becoming paralysed.

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