A woman who apparently committed suicide in Taipei on Wednesday was found with a note next to her body that expressed resentment toward a “friend,” reports said.
The Chinese-language Apple Daily reported that a 27-year-old woman surnamed Wu (吳) was found dead dressed entirely in red in a bathroom in a hotel room.
A letter written in blood on a piece of paper was directed to a woman surnamed Huang (黃), saying: “Go to hell,” and giving the full name.
A Chinese superstition says that people who die dressed in red could return as a malevolent spirit thirsting for revenge.
According to the Apple Daily report, Wu showed the letter in a video uploaded to Facebook shortly before the incident.
In the video, Wu said she wished Huang “a lovely sleep each night, for I will be by your side nightly,” adding that you “should always remember how you killed me with a few keystrokes.”
Police reports said it appeared that Wu shared a studio in New Taipei City’s Sanchong District (三重) with Huang, whom she met at a concert by singer J.J. Lin (林俊傑), with Wu and Huang both being fans, according to the Apple Daily.
Police located Wu by tracing the device used to make the Facebook posts, but by the time they found her at 5am on Thursday she was already dead, the newspaper said.
Wu’s father was quoted by the Apple Daily as saying that he had been on the telephone with Wu several days earlier, during which she complained she had a falling out with Huang.
Wu’s father said his daughter had asked Huang to return her set of keys, but Huang refused and also threatened to post details of Wu’s private life online.
The police seized Wu’s cell phone as part of their investigation into the case.
Meanwhile, Taipei Counseling Psychologist Association deputy director-general Lin Shih-li (林世莉) said that managing emotions following a fight with a friend is important.
People should find other friends to talk things over instead of stewing, Lin said.
Lin said that should people suspect a friend might be suicidal, they should listen to them and make sure they get professional help.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,