|
A man suspected of killing a Marine and injuring another before making off with an assault rifle in Gangwha County, Gyeonggi Province last Thursday has been arrested in downtown Seoul. Police on Wednesday retrieved the K2 rifle, hand grenade and other weapons from a location near an expressway rest area in Jangseong County, South Jeolla Province, where the suspect had apparently hidden them.
Police nabbed the suspect identified as Cho Young-kook (35) on a road near Danseongsa Theater in Jongno, Seoul around 3 p.m. Wednesday.
The previous day, Cho had written to police informing them where the weapons were hidden and of his intention to surrender. Police took a fingerprint from the letter which matched prints found at the crime scene and arrested him based on a tip-off from a friend.
A former Army sergeant, Cho ran an interior decorating shop in Seoul and reportedly lived in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province until recently. Police said the suspect confessed but would not say what motivated him to steal the weapons and where he intended to use them.
Cho led the police by the nose for six days. Since Thursday, the military and police had mobilized tens of thousands of investigators to find the killer. But he slipped through cracks in the dragnet, traveling throughout South Jeolla Province and Seoul.
According to the letter he sent to police, most of the information police had gathered from the crime scene and guesses made as to the killer’s identity proved inaccurate.
After the robbery, police presumed that the suspect must have had inside knowledge of the crime scene in Ganghwa. Based on this assumption, police at first investigated former Marines who had been discharged from the Fifth Regiment of the Second Marine Division. In addition, police had a blood-stained cap retrieved from the crime scene DNA-tested and compared the results of the DNA test with the DNA samples of former Marines. Instead, suspect turned out to be a former Army artilleryman.
Cho allegedly confessed that he smeared a third person's blood on the cap to obstruct the investigation. Police legwork also proved misguided. At first, police concentrated their energy on snooping around in the southern part of Gyeonggi Province, believing that the suspect, who sustained a wound to his forehead in a scuffle with Sergeant Lee Jae-hyuk (20), was hiding in this area.
But by that time, the suspect had already slipped out of the heavily guarded Gyeonggi provincial area and traveled all the way to Jangseong County. He had dumped the weapons in a location near the Honam Expressway and went back to his home in Seoul.
That rendered the heavy security checks pointless. Experts believe the search would have trodden water for a long time if the suspect had not turned himself in.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
|
