A man with a record for extortion had been feuding with the principal of a Taoyuan City cram school that was attacked by a fire bomb on Monday, police say.
Police say that their primary suspect in the arson, Chung Teh-shu (鍾德樹), had been fighting over money with the school's principal, Huang Chiu-min (黃秋閔), who died in the fire.
Huang, who ran the Chiayu Mental Arithmetic School for Children (
Witnesses said they heard Huang having an argument with a man on Monday morning and saw a man wearing a motorcycle helmet entering the school shortly before the fire.
After examining videotapes from every gas station in Taoyuan, police learned that Chung had ridden a white motorcycle to the Pu-tzu (
Chung allegedly told staff at the gas station that he was using the bag to carry the gas back to his car, which had run out of fuel.
Police also say that Chung made a phone call after the fire broke out, telling a friend that he had tossed a Molotov cocktail into the cram school.
Backed by these two pieces of evidence, prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant and placed a ban on Chung leaving the country.
Wang Tien-sheng (
In addition to Huang, 37, the fire killed nine-year-old pupil Lo Kuan-lin (
The survivors, including Huang's parents, were hospitalized with injuries from the fire that engulfed the classroom during the middle of a lunch break.
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