The deaths of an estranged couple and their two children found in a taxi by a field in Taichung’s Taiping District (太平) is suspected to be a murder-suicide, police said on Monday.
At 9am that day, a man surnamed Wang (王) called the police about a taxi parked with the motor running beside a stretch of farmland, the Taichung Police Department’s Taiping precinct said.
Inside were the bodies of a man surnamed Wu (吳), 32, the car’s registered owner; his wife, surnamed Peng (彭), 34; and the couple’s two children, a boy and a girl, whose identifying details were withheld as required by law in cases involving minors, police said.
Peng’s hands were bound with clear plastic tape, they said, adding that a stove, a bag of charcoal, two empty soft drink cups and some unidentified pills were also found on the scene.
A preliminary forensic examination found bruises, defensive wounds and ligature marks on Peng’s wrists, arms and neck consistent with strangulation, but the official cause of death is pending an autopsy, police said.
No marks indicating a struggle were found on the bodies of either child, they added.
Wu last year lost his job as a computer-aided designer and his unemployment had strained his marriage with Peng, who worked as a dental assistant, police said.
The couple separated about two months ago and the children stayed with Wu until the Lunar New Year, after which they moved in with Peng, they said.
Peng’s family last heard from her on Sunday morning before she took the children to the district’s 921 Earthquake Memorial Park to talk to Wu about a divorce, police said.
Investigators said they suspect that Wu picked up Peng and the children from the park before driving to Nantou County’s Houtanjing (猴探井), where a geo-tagged Facebook post was made on Peng’s account that read: “Who would not want their family to be together if they could?”
After being unable to contact her, the family filed a missing person report, police said.
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