Three contractors charged in screen collapse incident at Mirror concert

Hong Kong prosecutors have charged three contractors involved in the tragic screen collapse at boyband Mirror’s concert in July last year with conspiracy to defraud.

The unnamed trio, who comprise two project managers and a technical coordinator from the concert’s principal contract Engineering Impact Limited, were charged at the Kowloon West Regional Police Headquarters on January 20, The Standard reports. The trio are currently out on bail, with the case set to be heard in court on March 27, per Variety.

They were among the five people initially arrested in November after Kowloon West regional crime unit Superintendent Alan Chung accused the contractors of deliberately underreporting the weight of equipment in order to speed up the approval process for the concert. The other two people arrested were a business director of Engineering Impact and a senior technician from subcontractor Hip Hing Loong Stage Engineering Company.

In a follow-up statement to Hong Kong Free Press from Hong Kong’s Labour Department on January 27, it was also revealed that the department’s investigations had found Engineering Impact, Hip Hing Loong and Studiodanz Company may have breached occupation safety and employee compensation ordinances. 15 charges against the three companies will be heard at the Kowloon City Magistrates’ Court on March 27. The exact nature of these charges has not been revealed to the public yet.

Police previously found that Engineering Impact Limited had underreported the total weight of the six LCD screens at the show by 63 per cent, claiming that the 4,468.7kg worth of screens had only weighed 1,632.9kg. The weight of the speaker sets was also underreported with the contractor claiming the 5,552kg worth of speakers weighed only 752.7kg.

The screen collapse left dancer Mo Lee Kai-yin facing permanent vertebrae and nerve damage after it struck him in the neck as it fell, dislocating the third and fourth sections of Lee’s cervical vertebrae in the accident.

The accident left Lee unable to move his limbs and with injuries to his head and lungs. In November, the dancer’s father Derek Li revealed that he had recovered enough to take a shower for the first time in four months, the Straits Times reported.

Li also shared that his son had recovered enough to sit in a wheelchair for a longer period of time. Doctors had previously been uncertain if his damaged nerves would grow back following the injury, leaving him facing the possibility of becoming paralysed.

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