Police on Tuesday captured a parolee after he escaped his home by cutting off his electronic tracking bracelet with an electric chainsaw and then allegedly committed a robbery in Taipei.
At about 10pm on Monday, Ou Li-yuan (歐力源), 53, removed the tracking bracelet and drove a car to Taipei, where he allegedly robbed a betel nut stand of NT$6,000, police said.
He headed south on the highway and police caught him driving around Kaohsiung’s Gangshan District (岡山) at about 4pm on Tuesday.
Photo copied by Su Fu-nan, Taipei Times
He was transferred yesterday to Taipei and placed in detention.
Under questioning, Ou said he committed the robbery because he had gambling debts of about NT$100,000, police said.
Ou was sentenced to life imprisonment, after being found guilty of robbing a young passenger — he was driving his brother’s taxi — and raping her at knife-point in Taipei in April 1997.
After serving almost 20 years, Ou was paroled in August 2017, on condition that he wear the tracking bracelet and not leave his residence in Hualien between 10pm and 5am each day.
However, prosecutors said that Ou is now likely to serve an additional 25 years in prison.
In other news, police on Tuesday questioned three men in their 20s after a woman was found dead after a party at an apartment in New Taipei’s Banciao District (板橋).
Two roommates, surnamed Hsieh (謝), 28, and Cheng (鄭), 26, decided to hold a party at their apartment on Sunday night, and prepared food, alcohol and “narcotic coffee powder” — a mixture of narcotics and stimulants disguised as coffee, police said.
The pair called a friend surnamed Lee (李), 26, to join them, and then used a messaging app to contact an escort agency, which sent over a hostess surnamed Wu (吳), 31, who arrived at about 1am on Monday, police said.
Wu was found unconscious and not breathing the next day, so Hsieh called an ambulance, but she was pronounced dead after being rushed to a local hospital.
Under questioning, the three men admitted to partying with Wu and ingesting “narcotic coffee powder,” which they dissolved in hot water to drink, police said.
According to police, Hsieh said that Wu felt ill at about 6am on Monday, so he took her to his room to rest, and thought she was sleeping.
They only went in to check on her in the evening, and found her unconscious and not breathing, so they gave her CPR and called 119, Hsieh said.
Police yesterday said that the trio face narcotics charges, as Wu had likely died of an overdose, while Hsieh faces an additional charge of negligence causing death.
The powder’s composition was still being tested and an autopsy was being conducted, police said.
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