Hong Kong protests: open verdict recorded on death of student from car park fall

Saturday’s majority verdict of 4-1 followed two days of closed-door deliberations by the five-member panel at the Coroner’s Court, marking the end of a five-week inquiry over the youth’s demise, which grabbed international headlines and stirred further tensions in a city already gripped by months of social unrest in 2019.

That ruling implies most of the jurors were unable to accept investigators’ conclusion that Alex Chow Tsz-lok plunged four metres to his death on the second floor of the Sheung Tak Estate car park in Tseung Kwan O by leaping over the edge of the floor above, mistakenly believing there was a ledge behind it. Neither were they satisfied that the 22-year-old was assaulted and tossed out of the multistorey building in the early morning of November 4, 2019.

Coroner Ko Wai-hung expressed regret in his closing remarks, saying the jury might have arrived at a definitive judgment had security cameras at the scene captured the incident at a better angle or timing.

Chow, a Year Three computer science undergraduate at the University of Science and Technology, was found unconscious when a police clearance operation was under way at a nearby junction. He died of severe head injuries four days later in hospital.