[Anchor]

We continue our coverage of the Jang Yoon-gi case. Yesterday, July 15, the National Police Agency's special investigation team announced that they had uncovered circumstances suggesting Jang Yoon-gi knew the teenage victim even before the incident. Testimony has emerged indicating that the investigation team at the Gwangsan Police Station was aware of this at the time and reported to their superiors that "this seems to be a problem," but the matter was effectively ignored.

First, here is an exclusive report by reporter Son Gijun.

[Reporter]

"Circumstances have been discovered suggesting that Jang Yoon-gi knew the teenage victim before the crime." This was revealed by the National Police Agency's special investigation team during an interim briefing on the investigation yesterday.

The special investigation team explained that while these circumstances were discovered on a spare mobile phone belonging to Jang, no further verification was conducted during the initial investigation.

If these circumstances are true, they serve as a crucial clue suggesting the possibility that Jang had been targeting the teenage victim prior to the crime.

It is reported that the special investigation team has secured testimony to the effect that members of the investigation team at the time had identified these circumstances and exchanged comments such as, "Isn't this a problem?"

They reportedly testified that they reported this to the then-investigation team leader, Inspector A, but received no particular response.

The indictment for this case states that after spotting the teenage victim, Jang began to tail her in his vehicle. As the victim walked for 1.2 kilometers, he drove in the same direction, stopping or getting out of the car a total of four times to check her path.

The special investigation team is conducting further inquiries to verify whether these circumstances are true.

In response, Inspector A's side refuted the claims, stating that they were unaware of the existence of such evidence on the mobile phone and that they had not been asked a single question about it during the special investigation team's probe.

They further claimed that they had no knowledge of the relevant information until the police made the existence of such circumstances public.

(Video Editing: Shin Se-eun, Design: Park Tae-young)