The Kaohsiung branch of the Taiwan High Court yesterday handed a heavier, 10-year sentence to a man after his three-year-old daughter died from an air pump at a gas station.
The city’s Ciaotou District Court had earlier given the man, surnamed Kuang (鄺), a 22-month prison term, which many viewed as too lenient. Yesterday’s ruling was the second and can be appealed.
The High Court found Kuang guilty of deliberately causing injury to a child resulting in death.
Photo: Huang Pei-chun, Taipei Times
Investigators said the girl’s hand was too small to handle the air pump herself or to have exerted enough force to release the air.
The incident took place in January 2019, when Kuang drove to a gas station in Kaohsiung for the self-service car wash, as his daughter sat in the front passenger seat.
She was later found dead inside the car, with her face, chest and abdomen swollen.
Kuang told police that his daughter had been playing with the air pump at the car wash and accidentally blasted herself with it. She was pronounced dead on arrival after being rushed to a hospital.
An autopsy showed that the girl’s internal tissues were swollen and her lungs were punctured. It concluded that she died of tension pneumothorax, in which air escapes into the chest cavity, causing the lungs to collapse, most likely due to the release of air pressure into the lungs.
The Ciaotou District Court in July last year ruled that it was an accidental death, as the girl was playing by herself, putting the nozzle in her mouth and squeezing it, not realizing the danger.
The investigation found her DNA on the nozzle, but did not reach a conclusion on whether she operated it herself. Kuang was sentenced to 22 months in prison for negligence causing death. He was found guilty of failing to look after the girl and allowing her to play with the air pump.
Kuang’s ex-wife and mother of the child, surnamed Teng (鄧), filed an appeal.
The High Court ruled that Kuang had directly caused the girl’s death, most likely by putting the air nozzle in her mouth.
An investigator told the court that the girl had small hands, about 5.5cm in length, and it would have been difficult for her to grab and hold the air nozzle.
Tests also showed that a person would have to exert 7.7kg in pressure to squeeze the trigger, which would have been beyond the girl’s strength, so she could not have done it herself, the investigation said.
The manufacture of the remaining 28 M1A2T Abrams tanks Taiwan purchased from the US has recently been completed, and they are expected to be delivered within the next one to two months, a source said yesterday. The Ministry of National Defense is arranging cargo ships to transport the tanks to Taiwan as soon as possible, said the source, who is familiar with the matter. The estimated arrival time ranges from late this month to early next month, the source said. The 28 Abrams tanks make up the third and final batch of a total of 108 tanks, valued at about NT$40.5 billion
Two Taiwanese prosecutors were questioned by Chinese security personnel at their hotel during a trip to China’s Henan Province this month, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said yesterday. The officers had personal information on the prosecutors, including “when they were assigned to their posts, their work locations and job titles,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesman Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said. On top of asking about their agencies and positions, the officers also questioned the prosecutors about the Cross-Strait Joint Crime-Fighting and Judicial Mutual Assistance Agreement, a pact that serves as the framework for Taiwan-China cooperation on combating crime and providing judicial assistance, Liang
A group from the Taiwanese Designers in Australia association yesterday represented Taiwan at the Midsumma Pride March in Melbourne. The march, held in the St. Kilda suburb, is the city’s largest LGBTQIA+ parade and the flagship event of the annual Midsumma Festival. It attracted more than 45,000 spectators who supported the 400 groups and 10,000 marchers that participated this year, the association said. Taiwanese Designers said they organized a team to march for Taiwan this year, joining politicians, government agencies, professionals and community organizations in showing support for LGBTQIA+ people and diverse communities. As the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex
MOTIVES QUESTIONED The PLA considers Xi’s policies toward Taiwan to be driven by personal considerations rather than military assessment, the Epoch Times reports Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) latest purge of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) leadership might have been prompted by the military’s opposition to plans of invading Taiwan, the Epoch Times said. The Chinese military opposes waging war against Taiwan by a large consensus, putting it at odds with Xi’s vision, the Falun Gong-affiliated daily said in a report on Thursday, citing anonymous sources with insight into the PLA’s inner workings. The opposition is not the opinion of a few generals, but a widely shared view among the PLA cadre, the Epoch Times cited them as saying. “Chinese forces know full well that
RSS