The Kaohsiung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a suspect in the abduction of a teenage girl, with investigators alleging that he drugged her and gave her only one meal while she was confined for three days at his residence in Hsinchu County.
The court approved prosecutors’ request to detain Lo Yu-hsiang (羅育祥), 31, and placed him under restricted communication.
Prosecutors are seeking to charge him with abduction of a 14-year-old girl, violation of her right to sexual autonomy, obstruction of her personal freedom and possession of illegal drugs.
Lo is a repeat sexual offender against minors, prosecutors said, citing his conviction in 2018 by the Taipei District Court for drugging and sexually assaulting two girls, aged 15 and 16, when he worked as a manager for a firm in Taipei providing security guards for apartment buildings.
In July, the court sentenced Lo to 10 years in prison, but he has been out on bail since January last year.
Taipei District Court officials yesterday said they would immediately enforce the 10-year sentence, as Lo did not appeal the ruling, and incarcerate him as soon as the paperwork is completed.
Lo reportedly persuaded the girl, a Kaohsiung junior-high student surnamed Liu (劉), to meet him in Hsinchu by saying that he would hire her to play video games under other people’s accounts and help her get work in the entertainment industry, prosecutors said.
He allegedly took the girl to his residence in Jhudong Township (竹東), where he confined her in a secret room in his fourth-floor apartment, threatened her with a utility knife and put a metal collar around her neck, telling her that if she tried to escape, he would electrocute her through the collar, they said.
In the room, police found a black metal collar and 14g of Alprazolam, a category 4 narcotic used to treat anxiety, which can cause sleepiness, Kaohsiung police investigator Tseng Shun-kuang (曾順光) said, adding that Lo allegedly gave it to the girl.
Police are still waiting for test results to verify whether the girl was sexually assaulted and drugged, Tseng added.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, the girl’s father said: “This time, the court must give Lo a severe sentence.”
“He is a repeat sexual offender of underaged girls and if he is released, he will again lure innocent victims with his depraved criminal ways,” he added.
Prosecutors quoted Lo as saying during questioning that he did not abduct the girl, did not forcibly confine her inside his apartment, and that he was helping her to get work.
He denied committing any crime and would not tell police what he did to the girl during the three days, they said, adding that on Tuesday, police searched his home for the third time and found the secret room.
Prosecutors said they were investigating another man, surnamed Wang (王), who worked as a security guard at Lo’s apartment building and had given Lo his telephone number because he also wanted to hire girls to play video games.
They added that Lo had an accomplice surnamed Lu (盧) who allegedly drove around the greater Taipei area with the girl’s cellphone to confuse police, as more than 500 officers were searching for her after her family filed a missing person’s report late on Saturday.
After being questioned, Wang and Lo were confined to their residences until the investigation can be completed, they said.
Lo’s wife was listed as a person of interest in the case, they said.
She told prosecutors that she had not been living with Lo for some time and denied having knowledge of the weekend’s events, prosecutors said.
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