After two years of investigations, Keelung prosecutors on Thursday indicted a 36-year-old Keelung man on charges of involuntary manslaughter for allegedly beating his son to death nearly six years ago.
The indictment said Pai Chia-wen (白嘉文) allegedly assaulted the boy in June 2011 out of anger after the boy wet his bed, subsequently discarding the boy’s body in a remote location after he died of his injuries.
The boy had been living with Pai and his girlfriend surnamed Wang (王) since Pai was released from jail in 2010 for other crimes, according to the indictment.
Police said that Pai punched the three-and-a-half-year-old boy several times in the stomach and held him up by his neck despite Wang asking him to stop.
Pai then allegedly threw the boy to the floor, the indictment said, adding that he demanded that the boy march around while repeatedly yelling “one, two.”
The boy eventually lost consciousness, prompting Wang to plead with Pai to take the boy to the hospital, at which point he allegedly assaulted her, the indictment said.
After finding the boy dead at 4pm the next day, Pai allegedly took his body to an industrial area along Dongsin Street (東新) in Keelung’s Cidu District (七堵), it said.
The case came to light only three years ago when the New Taipei City Social Welfare Department contacted the police after discovering the boy had not been enrolled in elementary school.
Police tracked down Pai, who at the time was quoted by police as confessing to beating the boy to death and hiding the body.
Police said they searched the area in May last year, but still have not found a body.
Pai allegedly tried to resuscitate his son using CPR, prosecutors said, so they deemed the murder unintentional and charged him with involuntary manslaughter and criminal disposal of a corpse.
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