Embattled Minister of the Interior Jiang Yi-huah (江宜樺) and National Police Agency Director-General Wang Cho-chiun (王卓鈞) yesterday told the legislature that their handling of the Nov. 26 shooting of Sean Lien (連勝文) was appropriate.
Sean Lien, a son of former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), was shot in the face while stumping for Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Sinbei City councilor candidate Chen Hung-yuan (陳鴻源) in Taipei County on the eve of the special municipality elections.
A 29-year-old man named Huang Yun-sheng (黃運聖) died after being hit by the bullet after it passed through Lien’s cheeks.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Jiang and Wang presented their report of the shooting at the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee meeting yesterday.
The suspected gunman, Lin Cheng-wei (林正偉), grabbed Sean Lien’s collar with his left hand and, with the pistol he was holding in his right hand, shot Sean Lien while the two were struggling, Jiang said. The bullet went through Lien’s face and then hit Huang in the head. Huang died on his way to hospital, Jiang said.
Many issues surrounding the shooting still have be resolved, Jiang said. One of the issues police and investigators are still trying to clarify is whether Lin’s story — that Lin and Chen’s father were locked in a land dispute and that this was the motive for the attempted shooting — was true, he said.
Police and investigators have also yet to establish whether Lin had an accomplice, and if so, whether that accomplice was at the scene of the incident, Jiang said.
Other details investigators were probing included money exchanges between Lin and other parties and Lin’s social connections, which could help shed light on issues, he said.
However, lawmakers were unsatisfied with the Ministry of the Interior’s lack of progress in the case.
Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Chiu Yi-ying (邱議瑩) said that ministry officials had no idea that Sean Lien had checked out of National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH) on Sunday night showed how “incompetent” the ministry’s handling of the case was.
“How can you not even know that Sean Lien left the hospital last night [Sunday night]?” she asked Jiang and Wang.
Lawmakers also demanded to know when the case would be solved.
Jiang said there was no set timeline for solving the case, but he hoped the truth would be uncovered as soon as possible.
Defending the police agency’s handling of the shooting, Wang said the number of investigators and police working on the case was sufficient.
Meanwhile, Sean Lien thanked doctors and others yesterday for saving him after he came “within 0.5cm of being killed.”
In a statement released yesterday morning, he expressed his gratitude to all those who helped him “miraculously” get through “a life-threatening crisis,” in which the distance between life and death was “less than 0.5cm.”
“It was in such a narrow space that I felt the greatest warmth and care in my life,” he said in the statement.
Besides offering his thanks to the National Taiwan University Hospital medical team and well-wishers, Sean Lien thanked Liu Chen-nan (劉振南), a former gang leader who stopped the gunman from firing a second shot.
“Now that the heavens have ordained that I live on, I think it means I should be a good man who helps others. I promise I will work hard toward that goal,” he said in the statement.
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