Vietnamese students nabbed for catapulting steel balls at apartment windows

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Gwangju Nambu Police Station arrested two Vietnamese nationals without detention on charges of property damage for allegedly shooting steel balls and breaking the windows of an apartment Monday.

The two students allegedly fired the steel balls with a slingshot near an apartment in Nam-gu, Gwangju, damaging two windows on the 5th and 6th floors. The police received a report and conducted an investigation for four days before apprehending the suspects at a university dormitory at 5 p.m. on July 14.

The steel balls they used were 0.5 cm in diameter, which penetrated through the window screens and glass, entering the interior of the house.

"If the windows on the 6th floor of the apartment were shattered to this extent, there would have been significant casualties if someone had been hit.," one of the building's residents said.

The police initially suspected that it was a prank by nearby elementary school students, but it turned out to be foreign university students who had come to Korea as part of an exchange program.

During the police investigation, the suspects reportedly stated that they used the slingshot to catch fish at a nearby stream and fired towards the apartment building out of "curiosity," without any intention of breaking them.

By Cho Min-jeong(blacknib@heraldcorp.com)