The mother of the Vietnamese woman who died following a train derailment incident in March has arrived in Taiwan to take her daughter's ashes back to Vietnam. She said her daughter had told her in dreams that she had been murdered by a man.
The mother and an uncle of Chen Hong-chen (
Lee Shuang-chuan hung himself outside his home on March 23 after Pingtung prosecutors began to suspect he might have been involved in causing the derailment.
Prosecutors also suspect that Lee Shuang-chuan's elder brother Lee Tai-an (
Chen's mother and uncle arrived in Taiwan on Saturday. The mother told reporters that she had met her daughter three times in dreams. On each occasion her daughter had blood on her clothes and told her she had been killed by a man.
The mother added she wanted to know the truth about her daughter's death.
There was an uncomfortable atmosphere at yesterday's meeting between Lee's 82-year-old father Lee Chu-pao (李聚寶) and his Vietnamese in-laws.
Through a translator, the old man told the them that "although my son died, and your daughter died, we are still relatives, right?"
He agreed to let his in-laws take Chen's ashes and relics back to her homeland.
He also gave the mother US$1,000 to help Chen's family finish building a house in Vietnam.
Chen was found to have taken poison before the accident. Prosecutors suspect she was poisoned before boarding the train.
Their suspicions were aroused because Lee took out a NT$20 million (US$625,000) insurance policy on his wife that covered accidental death just days before the derailment.
Lee's previous wife, who was also Vietnamese, died in similar circumstances four years ago.
The westbound Taitung to Kaohsiung express train derailed on the night of March 17 as it reached the Fangshan (枋山)-Neishih (內獅) section of track in Pingtung County.
Three of the carriages flipped onto their sides on the track embankment and the engine was completely destroyed.
TRA's Taitung to Kaohsiung Southern Link Line has been vandalized six times since 2004.
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