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.
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