Court rules Lamma ferry collision's 39 victims were unlawfully killed
發佈日期: 2026-01-21 21:23
TVB News
The Coroner's Court ruled that the 39 people who died in the 2012 Lamma ferry collision were unlawfully killed.
The death inquest into the disaster began last May.
Lots of bereaved families arrived at the West Kowloon Magistrates' Court on Wednesday morning. Assistant Director of Marine Chan See-yin was also present.
On October 1 in 2012, Hong Kong Electric arranged for its employees and their relatives to watch the National Day fireworks over the Victoria Harbour, with some of them boarding the Lamma IV vessel.
It was hit by the Hong Kong and Kowloon Ferry-operated vessel Sea Smooth.
Without the presence of a watertight door, the Lamma IV began to tilt and sank shortly, resulting in 39 deaths.
Coroner Monica Chow read out all the 39 victims' names in court, and said 36 of them lost their lives due to drowning, while the remaining three died of multiple injuries.
The skipper of Sea Smooth and Lamma IV were convicted of manslaughter and endangering others' safety at sea respectively.
The coroner said the inquest applied the principle of "the balance of probabilities", and relevant evidence met the standards for both civil and criminal trials, ruling that the 39 victims were unlawfully killed.
Six key issues were being looked into during the inquest, including the Lamma IV's lack of a watertight door.
The Coroner said some comments coming from the experts were based on the assumption that removing the watertight door was wrong. Regulations at the time didn't request vessels navigating in designated waters, like the Lamma IV, to be equipped with a watertight door.
As such, the vessel's design was in compliance with the regulatory requirements at the time, and it should not be considered a faulty design simply because a large-scale accident occurred later.
The coroner has pointed out it has been confirmed by the designer of the Lamma IV that the omission of the watertight door was
a design decision made by the team collectively, based on the principle that even one of the compartments was flooded, the vessel would still maintain buoyancy.
The court also finds the testimony of Cheoy Lee Shipyards' director Ken Lo credible that the shipyard consciously made the decision
not to install a watertight door.
The court has reserved two days for the announcement of the verdict, and the coroner would continue addressing the remaining five issues on Thursday, including the suspicion that the crew was suspected to have worked overtime.
