Taichung prosecutors yesterday indicted a man on suspicion that he murdered his family, including his twin sons.
Investigators said that 29-year-old Chen Chia-hung (陳宏嘉) is the main suspect in the strangling death of his live-in girlfriend and the suffocation of their 11-month-old sons.
An autopsy and other evidence point to Chen quarreling with his 29-year-old girlfriend before he allegedly used his hands to strangle her for more than 10 minutes, resulting in her death on Nov. 3 last year, they said.
Investigators said that Chen admitted killing the babies, citing him as saying that because his girlfriend was dead, she would not be able to take care of them, and that he was unemployed and in debt, so he was unable to raise two children.
During questioning, Chen reportedly told investigators that the next morning he wrapped the twins in blankets and placed them in his washing machine for more than an hour, resulting in their suffocation.
In the indictment, prosecutor Chen Lung-hsiang (陳隆翔) quoted a poem from Lebanese-American writer Khalil Gibran’s best-selling book The Prophet: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself. They come through you, but not from you, and though they are with you yet, they belong not to you. You may give them your love, but not your thoughts, because they have their own thoughts.”
Children are not the property of adults and parents have no right to take control or decide their children’s lives, and must not apply their own values to deprive children of their right to enjoy life, as they have their own thoughts and souls, Chen Lung-hsiang said.
Taichung prosecutors requested that the court impose the maximum punishment, citing Chen Chia-hung’s “cruel and vile” murder of his own children and their mother.
After the murders, he allegedly took his girlfriend’s money to go eat and drink with friends while evading the police, prosecutors said.
Separately yesterday, the High Court upheld a murder conviction against taxi driver Wang Chang-chi (王長吉) for stabbing to death his girlfriend, surnamed Cheng (程), and handed him a prison sentence of 22 years and six months.
The ruling can still be appealed.
In another case, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by a man named Hsieh Ya-hsuan (謝亞軒) and handed him a 12-year prison sentence.
The court found Hsieh responsible for an accident on a major road in Taipei in October 2018, when he crashed his vehicle at high speed into shops, killing three people.
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