Pingtung youths rob minister's wife in drive-by incident

Minister of the Interior Su Jia-chyuan's (蘇嘉全) wife, Hung Heng-chu (洪恆珠), was robbed by two young men yesterday and lost her photo IDs, credit cards and NT$14,000 in cash.

According to the Pingtung police, the robbery took place around 11am yesterday, when Hung drove her Mercedes E-class sedan to a dealership for maintenance work. The two suspects, riding a scooter with the license plate KP3-256, approached Hung's car. One of them opened the passenger front door, grabbed Hung's handbag off the passenger seat and the pair took off.

Hung that she was standing outside the vehicle talking to the technicians at the time, but she was shocked as she saw everything happening. Other than being frightened, she was not harmed.

The Pingtung County Police Department immediately held a press conference and said that the same two suspects who robbed Hung have robbed another two victims in the city within half an hour. The police have identified them because they did not wear full-face motorcycle helmets to cover their faces. They were also seen by many witnesses. Officers said that the two suspects are two teenage men.

"All three victims drove Mercedes sedans. Hung was the second victim in the three robbery cases," said Ho Hai-min (何海民), the department commissioner.

"In addition to descriptions of their faces, officers also collected a few clear fingerprints from Hung's and the other two victims' vehicles. We have identified the suspects and are right now trying to track them down," he said.

According to Ho, in addition to the NT$14,000 stolen from Hung, the first victim lost US$800 and NT$800 and the third victim lost NT$10,000.

The robbery was regarded as a disgrace to the Pingtung County Police Department because Su, who was appointed as the minister of the interior last week, was Pingtung County commissioner before his promotion.

In addition, Hung is a former captain in the Pingtung County Police Department's Policewoman Corps.

"The minister did not give us a deadline or put pressure on us to solve the crime after he realized that his wife had been robbed," Ho said.

"However, he urged us to show the public how to avoid being robbed, although that is something we have been working on all the time," he said.