Police authorities said yesterday that Shih Kuo-ching (
Shih, 28, has a criminal record for robberies and spent most of his twenties in prison, Chang Jung-hsing (張榮興), a Tainan police officer in charge of the case, told reporters yesterday.
Shih was released from jail last June, Chang said.
The suspect already owned a pistol and stole another from a police officer during an altercation on Thursday, Chang said.
Police arrested the other suspect, Chen Jung-chi (
The altercation began when two expressway police officers Tainan County, Lin You-chung (林裕崇) and Lia Wen-ching (賴文卿), started chasing a speeding vehicle after it failed to respond to their request to pull over.
The chase ended in Liouchia (六甲), where the black vehicle rammed into the median of an exit ramp.
When the officers approached the vehicle, one of its occupants grabbed an officer's gun and fired a shot, missing the officer.
As the suspects' vehicle was no longer in a condition to be driven, the suspects attempted to hijack a passing car.
The driver, Hsiao Min-hsiang (
The National Police Bureau released a preliminary review of the incident yesterday, saying the two police officers had committed at least three mistakes during the Thursday night incident.
The officers chased the suspects for 15 minutes, but failed to report the matter to their colleagues or request assistance, the report said.
While the officers were aware that the suspects were driving a stolen car, they did not immediately arrest and handcuff them.
The two officers should have drawn their pistols while ascertaining the suspects' identities and should not have come so close to them, the report added.
Hsiao was later found dead in his vehicle.
A woman surnamed Lee later drove by the intersection and was threatened by the suspects with a pistol, whereupon she surrendered her vehicle.
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay