A college student from Taiwan charged with killing three men in their sleep hanged himself from a sprinkler head in his Wisconsin jail cell on Monday, one day before his trial was to begin, authorities said.
Officials were still investigating how Wu Meng-ju (
Wu, 20, came from Taiwan to study Chinese at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was charged in July 2003 with three counts of first-degree intentional homicide in the shootings of Jason McGuigan, 28, Dustin Wilson, 17, and Daniel Swanson, 25.
Investigators said gambling played a role in the slayings of the three roommates.
Wu allegedly told authorities he befriended McGuigan because he wanted to gamble and had McGuigan set up an offshore betting account for him. McGuigan also advised Wu which teams to bet on, and Wu used one tip to win US$17,000.
McGuigan allegedly threatened Wu at gunpoint to "keep his mouth shut" about the US$17,000 after Wu began celebrating the win in front of others, according to a criminal complaint. One witness told police McGuigan later said Wu was going to get what was coming to him.
The men were found dead of gunshot wounds after a woman looked into a window of a duplex and saw someone lying in a pool of blood.
Police said Wu's car was found in the driveway the day of the shootings. Authorities also found a plastic bag in a trash bin near Wu's apartment that contained a pair of sandals with traces of Wilson's blood and a letter with a return address from Wu.
Jury selection was scheduled to begin yesterday in Wu's trial.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching