Prosecutors on Thursday completed an investigation of a hit-and-run accident in Taichung last month in which a pastry chef was killed, bringing an indictment against a female suspect for drunk driving and charging two men who were accompanying her in the car.
According to a statement by the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office, the main suspect, a 34-year-old woman surnamed Yen (顏), was at the wheel of the car and tested over the legal limit for alcohol and tested positive for ketamine, an illegal drug.
The case has sparked a public furor, because the investigation revealed that Yen was a repeat offender.
In October 2015, she received a six-month prison sentence for driving under the influence (DUI) of alcohol and caused an accident that injured four people, but her sentence was commuted to a fine and she did not serve any prison time.
Yen was in June last year pulled over again for DUI, but she only had her driver’s license suspended, a lenient punishment.
On Nov. 13, Yen allegedly took ketamine at her residence, worked her hostess job at the Golden Jaguar, where she consumed whiskey and other alcoholic drinks, and then drove away from the nightclub in a Mercedes-Benz sedan, accompanied by the two men, at about 1am the next day.
Video evidence showed her running a red light and hitting the motorcycle of a 32-year-old pastry chef surnamed Chen (陳), who according to paramedics on the scene had no vital signs and was pronounced dead upon reaching a hospital.
The investigation showed that Yen did not stop, but continued down the road, where the damaged car later broke down.
The two men, surnamed Lin (林) and Lee (李), had Yen sit in the passenger seat while they pushed the damaged car into an alley, in an attempt to hide the car and cover up the accident.
Yen’s case has received much attention because it was her third DUI offense. She reportedly worked as a hostess at the Golden Jaguar nightclub in Taichung, serving drinks and entertaining male clients, as well as driving a Mercedes-Benz, a Lexus, and other luxury cars.
After the fatal accident on Nov. 14, Yen’s Breathalyzer test showed a blood alcohol level of 0.46 milligrams per liter (mg/L), well above the legal limit of 0.15mg/L.
Prosecutors charged her with offenses against public safety, negligence causing death and fleeing a traffic accident, while the two men in the car were charged with tampering with evidence.
Because the crime involved a hit-and-run that resulted in a person being killed and the main suspect was a repeat DUI offender who drove without a valid license, prosecutors have requested that the court impose a stiff punishment.
The prosecutors’ request to detain Yen until her court hearing, arguing that she and her companions fleeing from the scene and tampering with evidence in an attempt to cover up the accident showed that she is a flight risk, was approved by the Taichung District Court.
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
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
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