Authorities are looking for a suspect who they say is likely to be a hired hitman affiliated to criminal gangs, after two men were shot dead in a parking lot in Taipei’s Ximending (西門町) on Tuesday.
A preliminary investigation indicated that the double murder was related to money disputes arising from illicit drug dealings by organized crime groups who are active in northern Taiwan, a police official who declined to be named said.
The murder took place at Emei Car Park at about 11:40am on Tuesday.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
The older of the two cousins, 24-year-old Tsai, was shot four times, according to the autopsy, while the younger 21-year-old Tsai was shot twice by the hitman.
The police have recovered five 9mm bullet casings from the crime scene.
The police said they are looking for a man in his 30s, about 170cm tall, with a slender built, and have appealed to the public for information on the suspect.
Video footage showed the suspect wearing a black peaked cap, black jacket and blue jeans. He put on a gauze mask to conceal his face when he took the parking lot elevator from the seventh floor to the ground floor when he fled the scene. Once outside the car park, the suspect hailed a taxi at about 12:22pm.
Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has asked the police to step up efforts to crack the case.
A task force set up by the Taipei City Police Department and Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office conducted interviews yesterday with families and friends of the two victims to gather information.
Evidence from the crime scene suggested that the killer and the Tsai cousins knew each other.
Police said the three men were talking in the car park, where the killer shot one victim first, before killing the second victim when he returned from buying a beverage. He then piled the bodies into the backseat of a Toyota Camry, the car driven to Taipei from Greater Taichung by the two cousins.
Although the cousins did not have any previous criminal convictions, they did have prior charges related to possession of the illegal recreational drug ketamine, according to a police official.
Local news reports quoted a source from an organized crime group as telling the police that the murder was related to financial disputes from drug dealings and an underground betting operation that went sour, and the two cousins were killed when they demanded payment from a gangster boss, who hired a professional hitman to do the job.
Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) was sentenced to six months in prison, commutable to a fine, by the New Taipei District Court today for contravening the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) in a case linked to an alleged draft-dodging scheme. Wang allegedly paid NT$3.6 million (US$114,380) to an illegal group to help him evade mandatory military service through falsified medical documents, prosecutors said. He transferred the funds to Chen Chih-ming (陳志明), the alleged mastermind of a draft-evasion ring, although he lost contact with him as he was already in detention on fraud charges, they said. Chen is accused of helping a
SECURITY: Starlink owner Elon Musk has taken pro-Beijing positions, and allowing pro-China companies to control Taiwan’s critical infrastructure is risky, a legislator said Starlink was reluctant to offer services in Taiwan because of the nation’s extremely high penetration rates in 4G and 5G services, the Ministry of Digital Affairs said yesterday. The ministry made the comments at a meeting of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, which reviewed amendments to Article 36 of the Telecommunications Management Act (電信管理法). Article 36 bans foreigners from holding more than 49 percent of shares in public telecommunications networks, while shares foreigners directly and indirectly hold are also capped at 60 percent of the total, unless specified otherwise by law. The amendments, sponsored by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Ko
The eastern extension of the Taipei MRT Red Line could begin operations as early as late June, the Taipei Department of Rapid Transit Systems said yesterday. Taipei Rapid Transit Corp said it is considering offering one month of free rides on the new section to mark its opening. Construction progress on the 1.4km extension, which is to run from the current terminal Xiangshan Station to a new eastern terminal, Guangci/Fengtian Temple Station, was 90.6 percent complete by the end of last month, the department said in a report to the Taipei City Council's Transportation Committee. While construction began in October 2016 with an
NON-RED SUPPLY: Boosting the nation’s drone industry is becoming increasingly urgent as China’s UAV dominance could become an issue in a crisis, an analyst said Taiwan’s drone exports to Europe grew 41.7-fold from 2024 to last year, with demand from Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression the most likely driver of growth, a study showed. The Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technology (DSET) in a statement on Wednesday said it found that many of Taiwan’s uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) sales were from Poland and the Czech Republic. These countries likely transferred the drones to Ukraine to aid it in its fight against the Russian invasion that started in 2022, it said. Despite the gains, Taiwan is not the dominant drone exporter to these markets, ranking second and fourth
RSS