A recent spate of gangland shootings in central Taiwan has prompted police to step up security, with officers on the lookout for Wang Chun-wei (王俊偉), an alleged gang member believed to be connected to one of the clashes.
On Aug. 1 in Changhua City, a gunman opened fire on a restaurant owner outside of his restaurant. The victim was shot in the leg and his car was severely damaged.
Just nine days later, at least two gunmen armed with M-16 rifles stopped on a scooter in front of independent Legislator Yen Ching-piao’s (顏清標) office on Chunghsing Road in Shalu Township (沙鹿), Taichung County.
The gunmen fired more than 30 bullets at an SUV that two of Wang’s relatives were sitting in before driving off, police said. The victims sustained wounds to their arms.
Police would not confirm if the victims were connected to Yen in any way, but said Yen told them that he did not know Wang or any of his associates.
The next day, gunmen targeted a funeral director’s store in Nantou, firing 40 bullets with automatic weapons. The incident took place at night and nobody was injured.
Following the shootings, National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) stationed himself in Taichung, where he chaired a meeting with top officers to discuss how to proceed.
“We have yet to discover any direct evidence proving that Wang Chun-wei is related to the shootings, but we need to find him as soon as possible, especially now that he has become a major organized crime figure in the Taichung area,” the police chief said.
Police said Wang Chun-wei, Chen Yung-chih (陳勇志) and Chang Hung-jih (張宏吉) began working together last September, when they tried to blackmail a Taichung businessman who won NT$200 million (US$6.6 million) at a casino in Macau. They mailed a letter and a bullet asking for NT$60 million in the failed blackmail attempt. Police found Wang Chun-wei’s fingerprints on the letter.
At Wang Cho-chiun’s request, approximately 600 armed police officers have stepped up random vehicle checks since Tuesday in hopes of finding Wang Chun-wei.
“These gangsters dare to open fire in the streets,” Nantou County’s Police Department deputy head Tsai Jung-lin (蔡榮林) said. “We need to let them know that the police will not stand for it.”
Also See: EDITORIAL: Making a mockery of the law
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