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Towel in the Mouth of a Suicidal Drunk Detainee: Police and Firefighters Acquitted by Jury

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Two police officers and two firefighters charged with negligent homicide after a drunk woman died following their attempt to stop her from biting off her own tongue have been unanimously acquitted by a citizen jury — with the court endorsing the verdict. Here are the key points.

Background

  • At around 1:58 AM on August 26, 2022, two police officers in Geoje, South Gyeongsang Province responded to a report of a woman, A (41), lying in the street. A refused to comply with requests to go home, physically assaulted the officers, and was arrested on the spot for obstruction of official duties.
  • Handcuffed and continuing to resist, A demanded her handcuffs be removed. When refused, she said “then I’ll have to bite my tongue off and die” — and immediately attempted to do so.
  • The officers repeatedly pushed a towel into A’s mouth to stop the self-harm.
  • When 119 paramedics arrived, they were told by the officers that A might self-harm. Relying on this warning, they did not immediately remove the towel. Once A appeared to have gone into cardiac arrest, they removed it and began CPR.
  • A died on September 17, 2022 at a Busan hospital from airway obstruction asphyxiation.
  • All four were charged with negligent homicide — the two officers for inserting the towel, the two firefighters for not removing it upon arrival.

Court Decision

  • Changwon District Court (Criminal Division 4, Judge Oh Dae-seok) acquitted all four defendants following a citizen participation trial in which all seven jurors unanimously voted not guilty.
  • The court adopted the jury’s verdict and gave the following reasons.

On the police officers, the court found they had chosen to insert the towel as a rapid and effective means of stopping a sudden and violent self-harm attempt by a person actively resisting arrest. Given the circumstances — a combative, heavily intoxicated detainee making an immediate attempt to bite through her own tongue — the choice was a reasonable response to an emergency, not a negligent act. The evidence was insufficient to establish that the officers foresaw the risk of fatal asphyxiation and failed to take necessary precautions.

On the firefighters, the court found they had checked A’s pulse and looked for alternative items to place in the mouth in lieu of the towel — indicating they were not simply passive. Medical experts testified that immediately removing the towel under those chaotic field conditions would have been difficult. The court found it could not be established that the firefighters had violated their duty of care.

Key Takeaways

  • First responders making split-second decisions to prevent immediate self-harm in volatile emergency situations are not held to a standard of perfect judgment. The assessment of negligence must account for the conditions under which the decision was made.
  • The foreseeability of asphyxiation risk is a threshold element of negligence — where the evidence does not establish that responders foresaw or should have foreseen that specific fatal risk in the circumstances, a negligence finding cannot stand.
  • Reliance on contemporaneous information from fellow responders — here, the firefighters relying on the police warning about self-harm risk — does not by itself constitute negligent omission, particularly where the responder takes some protective steps and conditions make immediate intervention difficult.
  • Citizen participation trials in Korea produce advisory verdicts that judges must consider but are not strictly bound to follow. Here, the unanimous jury verdict and the court’s judgment aligned completely.

Why This Matters

This case raises deeply difficult questions about the duty of care owed to people in police custody who pose an immediate danger to themselves. The acquittal reflects a judicial and jury consensus that first responders acting under extreme pressure to prevent imminent self-harm cannot be held criminally liable where the specific fatal outcome was not clearly foreseeable from the vantage point of the moment. For policy, the case highlights the need for clearer protocols — on both police and paramedic sides — for managing self-harm risk in restraint situations, so that front-line responders have better guidance than improvised judgment under pressure. For practitioners, it illustrates the limits of retrospective negligence analysis when applied to emergency decisions made with incomplete information in seconds.

Article: https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20260903136800052?input=1195m

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