The chief suspect in an attack on a Taipei restaurant involving the release of 1,000 live cockroaches was detained and held incommunicado yesterday, while bail was set at NT$50,000 each for his three alleged accomplices.
The Taipei District Court granted prosecutors’ request to detain the 26-year-old chief suspect, surnamed Wu (吳), but declined requests to detain his co-suspects, surnamed Tsao (曹), Hsu (許) and Tsai (蔡), who are in their early 20s.
The four men, who were arrested on Tuesday during raids in Taipei and New Taipei City, along with a female minor who was later released, said they had been hired to “persuade” the owner of the restaurant to settle a debt with an unidentified creditor.
After interrogating the men, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office on Wednesday filed requests to have them detained on suspicion of using threats or violence at a public gathering, citing the risk that they might try to collude with each other or flee if they were granted bail.
At their detention hearings late on Wednesday and early yesterday, the four suspects told the court that after seeing media reports about the attack, they contacted each other and decided to go into hiding in Taichung.
However, because of media coverage of the incident, they were unable to find accommodation in Taichung and decided to return by car to Taipei, the court said, adding that three of the suspects said they had disposed of their phones to avoid being tracked.
A major piece remains missing in the case, as prosecutors have yet to identify the person who directed the attack, the court said.
At his detention hearing, Wu told the court that he did not know the name or address of the person who hired him, as they had only communicated via a messaging app and that he had discarded his phone.
Wu said he had initially contacted the person to borrow money and that he agreed to carry out the attack when the person promised him 20 to 30 percent of the profit on any debts they recover.
He said the person also made an advance payment of NT$16,000 to Tsao and Hsu.
The court said it ordered Wu’s detention because it believes he knows and might be trying to protect the mastermind behind the attack and could try to collude with them if he were granted bail.
As for the three other suspects, the court said that although they pose a flight risk, several mitigating factors — including their relative youth, their minor roles in the attack and their clean records — did not justify pretrial detention.
The attack took place at the G House Taipei restaurant on Xinsheng N Road, just before 7:30pm on Monday.
The suspects, dressed in black, allegedly entered the restaurant and threw more than 1,000 small cockroaches into the air near a counter on the second floor, before fleeing in a vehicle and on a scooter.
Wu said they had purchased the cockroaches — a variety commonly used by aquarists as fish food — for NT$10,000 from an aquarium shop in New Taipei City, before dividing them into three bags and driving to the restaurant.
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck off the coast of Hualien County in eastern Taiwan at 7pm yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The epicenter of the temblor was at sea, about 69.9km south of Hualien County Hall, at a depth of 30.9km, it said. There were no immediate reports of damage resulting from the quake. The earthquake’s intensity, which gauges the actual effect of a temblor, was highest in Taitung County’s Changbin Township (長濱), where it measured 5 on Taiwan’s seven-tier intensity scale. The quake also measured an intensity of 4 in Hualien, Nantou, Chiayi, Yunlin, Changhua and Miaoli counties, as well as
Credit departments of farmers’ and fishers’ associations blocked a total of more than NT$180 million (US$6.01 million) from being lost to scams last year, National Police Agency (NPA) data showed. The Agricultural Finance Agency (AFA) said last week that staff of farmers’ and fishers’ associations’ credit departments are required to implement fraud prevention measures when they serve clients at the counter. They would ask clients about personal financial management activities whenever they suspect there might be a fraud situation, and would immediately report the incident to local authorities, which would send police officers to the site to help, it said. NPA data showed
ENERGY RESILIENCE: Although Alaska is open for investments, Taiwan is sourcing its gas from the Middle East, and the sea routes carry risks, Ho Cheng-hui said US government officials’ high-profile reception of a Taiwanese representative at the Alaska Sustainable Energy Conference indicated the emergence of an Indo-Pacific energy resilience alliance, an academic said. Presidential Office Secretary-General Pan Men-an (潘孟安) attended the conference in Alaska on Thursday last week at the invitation of the US government. Pan visited oil and gas facilities with senior US officials, including US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy and US Senator Daniel Sullivan. Pan attending the conference on behalf of President William Lai (賴清德) shows a significant elevation in diplomatic representation,
The Taipei City Reserve Command yesterday initiated its first-ever 14-day recall of some of the city’s civilian service reservists, who are to undergo additional training on top of refresher courses. The command said that it rented sites in Neihu District (內湖), including the Taipei Tennis Center, for the duration of the camp to optimize tactical positioning and accommodate the size of the battalion of reservists. A battalion is made up of four companies of more than 200 reservists each, it said. Aside from shooting drills at a range in New Taipei City’s Linkou District (林口), the remainder of the training would be at
RSS