A fight on a bus between students from a vocational school in Yunlin County on Thursday resulted in one of the students being stabbed and hospitalized.
The incident involved students from Da Cheng Vocational High School in Yunlin’s Huwei Township (虎尾).
Thursday’s stabbing came in the wake of the killing spree by a knife-whielding man on Taipei’s Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system on May 21 fueling rumors about “a copycat incident of the Taipei MRT killer in Yunlin County,” with some claiming the “attacker was found to be carrying four knives.”
On Friday, Da Cheng school officials held an assembly to give details of the incident to the student body in a bid to quash the rumors.
Thursday’s fight was sparked when one student from the school’s department of automotive repair asked a fellow student, surnamed Huang (黃), to give his seat to a female classmate, said Lei Hsin-feng (雷新峰), director of student affairs at the school.
Huang reportedly replied: “It’s none of your business.”
That afternoon, Huang and the automotive repair student shared the same bus on the return route, Lei said.
The automotive repair student called on two classmates on the bus to “beat up that guy [Huang] who would not give up his seat for the woman.”
While being assaulted by the three, Huang took out a Swiss army knife to defend himself and during the struggle stabbed the automotive repair student in the midsection near the stomach, Lei said.
When the injured student started bleeding, other students on the bus panicked, and the driver ordered Huang off the bus and then contacted school officials to report the incident.
The injured student was taken to a local hospital to have his wound attended to and is recovering well, Lei said.
School officials said that the injured student’s and Huang’s parents were notified of the incident and because the families know each other, since they live in neighboring villages, they did not take legal action.
Other students at the school said the incident was a shock because Huang is known as a courteous, friendly person, as well as a talented student who won first place in a national arts competition.
Some students were quoted as saying that Huang and the stabbed student know each other well and had quarreled previously, adding that the disagreement over the bus seat might have been a continuation of their feud.
Yeh Pao-chuan (葉寶專), a psychiatrist at National Taiwan University Hospital’s Yunlin County Branch, said that extensive media reports on the MRT killings could lead to copycat incidents.
“This is a phenomenon worth examining by society,” Yeh said. “At this time, people and especially parents should pay close attention to young people and what they are going through.”
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