Two janitors in Tainan on Monday carried the body of a suicide victim to the building’s recycling center after mistaking it for a doll.
Early that morning, a physical therapist surnamed Wang (王) was found dead on the driveway to a residential building in Tainan’s Anping District (安平).
Local media reported that Wang jumped to her death from her 10th-floor residence in the middle of the night, because she had been diagnosed with end-stage renal disease and did not want her parents to also suffer, as she would have needed dialysis treatment for the rest of her life.
Heavy rain throughout the night washed away the bloodstains on the ground, where fallen leaves had gathered, and because of Wang’s relatively small physique, a pedestrian mistook the body for a doll or mannequin and informed the building’s janitors, the reports said.
One of the two janitors — a 65-year-old woman surnamed Tsai (蔡) — on Thursday said that when she first touched Wang’s leg, she suspected it was a real person, but her coworker insisted that it was a doll or mannequin, so they moved the body onto a cart and pushed it to the building’s recycling center.
However, she saw that the head was dented and the face looked like one of the building’s residents, so she asked another coworker to look at the body, who confirmed that it was a woman, Tsai said.
“At first, when I was moving the dead body, I really believed it was a doll, so I was not afraid,” Tsai said.
“After learning that it was a dead body, I became so scared,” she said. “For the past two days, I have been getting goosebumps all over my body every time I think about what happened.”
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai