Prosecutors yesterday filed charges against four law-enforcement officers in Taoyuan who were accused of conspiring to cover up a fatal hit-and-run to protect a fellow officer.
At the center of the scandal is Lee Wen-yi (李文億), a 34-year-old officer in Taoyuan’s Dasi District (大溪), who prosecutors said was the driver of the vehicle that hit and killed a university student on Jan. 1.
The case has drawn a lot of public interest because the officer is a son of Lee Ching-yuan (李清淵), a special service officer who serves as a personal bodyguard of Vice President Wu Den-yih (吳敦義).
Taoyuan district prosecutors yesterday charged Lee Wen-yi with negligent homicide, destruction of evidence and other charges.
Prosecutors also indicted two senior police officers — former Taoyuan Nanya Precinct (南雅) chief Chang Yu-lin (張育霖) and precinct deputy chief Chu Ching-chuan (楚慶權) — and a junior officer, Feng Shih-hao (馮世豪).
They are accused of conspiring with Lee Wen-yi to conceal the crime, including deleting footage from street surveillance cameras and helping him avoid prosecution.
Prosecutors said the charges were the result of a four-month investigation to gather evidence and witness testimonies for the indictments, which also included two of Lee Wen-yi’s friends, surnamed Chien (錢) and Hung (洪), for taking part in the cover-up.
The involvement of senior law enforcement officers and efforts to conceal the crime have sparked criticism from the public, who have described the case as one of “the most reprehensible police scandals” in recent years.
Critics said the indicted officers “should be upholding the law and protecting citizens, but instead they have perverted the law and abused their vested power.”
Prosecutors alleged that Lee Wen-yi, who is also suspected of being intoxicated at the time, drove into traffic in Taoyuan’s Lujhu District (蘆竹), hitting and killing Wang Chia-han (王佳函), a 22-year-old university student.
According to investigators, Lee fled from the scene and called his friends, Chien and Hung, along with the two senior and junior police officers before heading to an auto shop to discuss the matter.
Feng was the first officer to arrive at the scene of the accident. Knowing that it involved Lee Wen-yi, Feng took a quick look then drove away, ignoring the victim as she lay bleeding on the ground, investigators said.
The two senior police officers schemed with Feng to cover up the crime by confiscating all surveillance footage from the area to delete evidence of the accident and of Lee Wen-yi driving his car through the area, the investigators added.
They also took and deleted footage from video recorders on police cruisers that arrived at the scene to investigate.
Lee Wen-yi hid in a motel and only turned himself in on Jan. 2, with investigators suspecting he waited in order to pass a Breathalyzer test.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
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:
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
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