Authorities yesterday said they are investigating the involvement of a suspect in two murders, where the bodies of the victims were found inside sealed oil drums at a remote location on the nation’s Central Cross-Island Highway.
Prosecutors along with police investigators yesterday said the primary suspect, surnamed Yang (楊), was seen with both victims, and that all three were connected and lived in Taichung.
Hualien County police officers on Sunday were contacted by a road-repair work crew who found a green steel drum containing a decomposing corpse.
It was the second incident of its kind within nine days. The two drums were found about 200m apart, down a ravine along the Central Cross-Island Highway, on the Hualien County side.
The first drum, blue in color, was found on Sept. 26. The victim was identified as a 72-year-old man surnamed Lai (賴).
The second victim, found on Sunday, has been tentatively identified as a man in his 60s surnamed Chen (陳), identified by a tattoo on his left arm.
Hualien District head prosecutor Hsu Chien-jung (許建榮) said both bodies were placed upside down inside the 55 gallon (208 liter) oil drums, and in both cases, the drums were sealed in the same way using metal clippers and screws.
“Along with the location of the two drums, there were numerous similarities in the way the victims’ bodies were found, so it is likely the two cases are connected,” Hsu said.
Investigators said Lai had been missing since July this year, while Chen was reported missing last month.
Authorities in Taichung yesterday said Chen’s landlord has testified to seeing the suspect and the two victims together, walking into Chen’s residence.
Police are continuing to investigate Yang’s possible connection to the case.
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
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
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