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.”
An increase in Taiwanese boats using China-made automatic identification systems (AIS) could confuse coast guards patrolling waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast and become a loophole in the national security system, sources familiar with the matter said yesterday. Taiwan ADIZ, a Facebook page created by enthusiasts who monitor Chinese military activities in airspace and waters off Taiwan’s southwest coast, on Saturday identified what seemed to be a Chinese cargo container ship near Penghu County. The Coast Guard Administration went to the location after receiving the tip and found that it was a Taiwanese yacht, which had a Chinese AIS installed. Similar instances had also
GOOD DIPLOMACY: The KMT has maintained close contact with representative offices in Taiwan and had extended an invitation to Russia as well, the KMT said The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) would “appropriately handle” the fallout from an invitation it had extended to Russia’s representative to Taipei to attend its international banquet last month, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) said yesterday. US and EU representatives in Taiwan boycotted the event, and only later agreed to attend after the KMT rescinded its invitation to the Russian representative. The KMT has maintained long-term close contact with all representative offices and embassies in Taiwan, and had extended the invitation as a practice of good diplomacy, Chu said. “Some EU countries have expressed their opinions of Russia, and the KMT respects that,” he
VIGILANCE: The military is paying close attention to actions that might damage peace and stability in the region, the deputy minister of national defense said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) might consider initiating a hack on Taiwanese networks on May 20, the day of the inauguration ceremony of president-elect William Lai (賴清德), sources familiar with cross-strait issues said. While US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement of the US expectation “that all sides will conduct themselves with restraint and prudence in the period ahead” would prevent military actions by China, Beijing could still try to sabotage Taiwan’s inauguration ceremony, the source said. China might gain access to the video screens outside of the Presidential Office Building and display embarrassing messages from Beijing, such as congratulating Lai
Four China Coast Guard ships briefly sailed through prohibited waters near Kinmen County, Taipei said, urging Beijing to stop actions that endanger navigation safety. The Chinese ships entered waters south of Kinmen, 5km from the Chinese city of Xiamen, at about 3:30pm on Monday, the Coast Guard Administration said in a statement later the same day. The ships “sailed out of our prohibited and restricted waters” about an hour later, the agency said, urging Beijing to immediately stop “behavior that endangers navigation safety.” Ministry of National Defense spokesman Sun Li-fang (孫立方) yesterday told reporters that Taiwan would boost support to the Coast Guard