SEOUL– Police are considering seeking an arrest warrant for a former chief of the Yongsan Police Station as early as this week as part of their probe into the bungled response to the deadly crowd crush in Seoul’s Itaewon neighborhood, officials said Monday.

The move comes a week after a court denied a special police investigation team’s request for a warrant to arrest Lee Im-jae, citing the need to guarantee the right to defend himself.

Lee has been booked on charges of professional negligence and manslaughter by negligence resulting in the deaths, police said. Lee is accused of arriving at the site late, some 50 minutes after the tragedy happened.

He is also accused of not taking enough crowd control measures after prior warnings of overcrowding during the Halloween celebrations, police said.

On Sunday, the investigation team questioned him again on the additional suspicion that he ordered a subordinate to fabricate information in an internal report on police response to the tragedy

The investigation team suspects the time Lee arrived at the accident scene was falsified in the report.

Officials said the investigation team is currently reviewing whether to present the new suspicion when it seeks an arrest warrant for Lee again, adding the team is planning to file for the warrant as early as this week.

The crowd crush killed 158 people in the Itaewon district of the Yongsan Ward on Oct. 29. Lee was relieved of duty as the Yongsan Police Station chief following the incident.

Source: Yonhap News Agency