A college student surnamed Lee (李) reportedly heard of the intentions of the supposed Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) assailant Cheng Chieh (鄭捷) to carry out a killing spree hours before it took place on Wednesday, but did not inform anyone, local media reported yesterday.
Cheng, 21, is the suspect in the deaths on Wednesday of four passengers and assaults on 24 others on a Taipei MRT train at 4:26pm on the Bannan line. He was detained by police and MRT staff.
“I could not tell if he really meant to do it,” Lee, interviewed by prosecutors on Friday, was quoted by the Chinese-language China Times as saying. “I very much value my friendship with Cheng. If I told someone what he said, I was afraid of losing this friendship.”
The China Times report added that Lee was Cheng’s only close friend. They had been classmates at Hongdao Junior High School in Taipei.
Just two hours before the alleged MRT attack, Cheng met Lee at a fast-food restaurant.
Lee, whose family told police he is an introvert and has autistic tendencies, was quoted by police as saying that Cheng had talked about killing people many times, and that he could only try to dissuade him from having such thoughts because he could not tell whether Cheng meant it.
He said in the past six months, Cheng had talked more frequently about killing people, but “I did not report this to the police, because I did not know if he was talking ‘for real’ or not.”
Lee said that Cheng called him around 2pm on Wednesday and said to meet him at a McDonald’s restaurant on Wenhua Road in New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋).
“At first, Cheng started talking about playing Tower of Saviors and League of Legends and other combat video games,” Lee said, then after about half an hour, Cheng said he had to leave.
Lee said that before he left, Cheng told him: “It’s about that time now. I have to pull my emotions together. Right after this, I will start the action.”
Lee said he knew Cheng was talking about killing people, “but I heard him talk about this countless times since our school days, so I did not pay particular notice this time.”
Cheng was also quoted by Lee as saying that he had a lot of stress from academic demands and job hunting, and that he was thinking about suicide.
After questioning at his local police precinct on Thursday, Lee was taken to the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Friday for more questioning and was released.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
A bipartisan group of US senators has introduced a bill to enhance cooperation with Taiwan on drone development and to reduce reliance on supply chains linked to China. The proposed Blue Skies for Taiwan Act of 2026 was introduced by Republican US senators Ted Cruz and John Curtis, and Democratic US senators Jeff Merkley and Andy Kim. The legislation seeks to ease constraints on Taiwan-US cooperation in uncrewed aerial systems (UAS), including dependence on China-sourced components, limited access to capital and regulatory barriers under US export controls, a news release issued by Cruz on Wednesday said. The bill would establish a "Blue UAS
RSS