Hong Kong inquest verdict into ferry crash ‘will be ellipsis ... not full stop’

Alice Leung Shuk-ling has spent more than a decade seeking the truth behind a ferry crash in 2012 that killed her younger brother and 38 others, and she expects a Coroner’s Court verdict due Wednesday to be merely an ellipsis – not a full stop – in her quest.Leung, 40, said she never expected last year’s 44-day inquest on the Lamma IV crash would unearth all the answers families of the deceased had demanded for years.But she believed the inquest had a “symbolic meaning” for those who wanted to know why their loved ones – who boarded the vessel on October 1, 2012, to watch the National Day fireworks – met their tragic end.Alice Leung lost her younger brother in the 2012 ferry tragedy. Photo: Sun YeungThe Lamma IV was struck by the Sea Smooth catamaran while carrying 124 HK Electric employees and their relatives to watch National Day fireworks over Victoria Harbour on October 1, 2012.The coroner is expected to hand down a verdict on the cause of the tragedy on Wednesday, nearly 13 years after a commission of inquiry on the collision submitted a report to the government in April 2013.The government had also conducted internal investigations while separate police probes resulted in the prosecution and convictions of relevant parties.In 2020, the Coroner’s Court determined that an inquest was unnecessary, given the findings of the commission in 2013 and subsequent criminal proceedings.