Authorities said depression and failing health and were the likely causes of a recent suspected murder-suicide in Taichung, with the bodies of a man and his son found on a hillside road.
Police officers were at first perplexed by the remains found in Taichung’s Dakeng Hill (大坑山) area on Monday.
A younger man had a burned-out cigarette dangling from his mouth, while the body of an elder man was clasping the younger man’s neck, police said.
Both bore deep cuts to their abdomens and there was a kitchen knife next to them, police said.
A preliminary investigation found the remains belonged to a 68-year-old man surnamed Cheng (鄭) and his 41-year-old son from Taichung, officials said.
Pools of blood were found on the ground and in a nearby car, they added.
Cheng’s family said the father in recent years developed depression, difficulty sleeping and other, while his unmarried son was an alcoholic and had diabetes.
Investigators said Cheng’s depression and his responsibility to take care of his son — who lived at home — led him to take his son’s life and commit suicide.
Police think Cheng lit the cigarette and placed it in his son’s mouth as he lay down dying in a gesture of comfort and reflecting a cultural belief about sending his son away on “a final journey.”
A close friend of the Cheng family for more than 30 years said the father was not a hateful person, but became depressed alongside his worsening health and because of his son’s problems.
“The old man suffered physically and mentally with depression and ailments, while having to take care of his unmarried son. He started to keep a knife in the bedroom and told me that he wanted to ‘take his son to die together’ earlier this year,” the friend said.
The incident exposes inadequacies in the nation’s social welfare system, critics said, adding that it also highlights the lack of health workers to provide counseling for suicide prevention.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods