Guard told he should have helped electrocuted schoolboy
A security guard was told by the coroner yesterday he should have tried to help a 12-year-old boy who had been electrocuted and was hanging upside down over a ladder.
Guard Lee Chun-fai told coroner Peter White he had felt 'incapable' of saving Primary Five student Cheuk Lee-hung, who hung on the ladder for at least 20 minutes before being lifted down by firemen.
But Mr White told him: 'You should have made an effort to make that person as comfortable as possible. If he was not dead, he might have suffered more severe injuries' from hanging upside down.
Lee-hung died at Nam Fung Sun Chuen, Quarry Bay, on May 26 last year when he was electrocuted after climbing the metal ladder to retrieve a football.
Mr Lee said that instead of lifting the boy down himself he had decided to wait for firemen and ambulance workers who arrived at the scene about five minutes after a report was made.
'My responsibility would be even bigger if I dropped the boy during the rescue,' he said. 'During the training course for security guards, we were told to wait for police to handle things if we were incapable of doing them.'
Lee-heung and his friends had been playing football for about 21/2 hours before the tragedy happened about 11.30am.
One of the boys accidentally kicked the ball into a light well on the podium.
The four children went down to the lowest level of the car park building and entered an unlocked ventilation room to gain access to the light well, coroner's officer Norton Pang said.
'When Lee-hung climbed up the ladder, he touched a metal bar and got a shock. One of his legs was trapped between the rungs and he was hanging upside down,' Mr Pang said.
One of the three witnesses told the court he thought Lee-hung was only playing games with them by hanging from the ladder.
They left the scene and waited for about 15 minutes before they sought help from a passerby.
During the hearing, the coroner also asked Mr Pang to find out from the district council whether there were sufficient facilities for young people in the area.
The hearing, which is set for three to five days, continues today. Vineberg Property Management, the management company of Nam Fung Sun Chuen, was represented by barrister Christopher Wong.
