An 18-year-old student left in a critical condition after an alleged assault triggered by a minor traffic accident has thanked well-wishers for their support, after he was transferred to the general ward of Taichung Veterans General Hospital on Monday.
In a prerecorded clip released on Tuesday, the university student surnamed Sung (宋) thanked people for their encouragement, as well as the flood of cards and flowers he received wishing him a speedy recovery.
“I’m feeling good, and want to get better swiftly and go back to school soon,” said Sung, who had improved enough to leave the intensive care unit (ICU) on Monday.
Photo courtesy of Taichung City Government via CNA
Sung, a student at Feng Chia University, was allegedly beaten into a comatose state in the early hours of Nov. 7.
Sung’s car glanced a Maserati driven by 25-year-old Lee Wei-lin (李韋霖) when changing lanes, the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office said.
Lee, along with 23-year-old Chang Tun-liang (張敦量) and 19-year-old Chen Chin-hao (陳勁豪), who were passengers in the Maserati, then beat Sung unconscious with a baseball bat at the intersection of Taiwan Boulevard and Henan Road, the office said.
Sung had an intracranial hemorrhage and would need to undergo rehabilitation, Andrew Shen (沈炯祺), director of the Neurology Institute at Taichung Veterans General Hospital, said on Tuesday.
“Fortunately his auditory nerve and optic nerve have not been damaged, and he will gradually get better and eventually recover,” Shen said.
Lee, Chang and Chen were detained incommunicado on Thursday last week, and are being investigated by prosecutors for attempted murder, offenses against public order, threatening behavior and intentional injury.
In May, Chang was indicted for the use of threatening behavior and violence when seeking to collect a debt with his friends, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Chuo Chun-chung (卓俊忠) of the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office said
Speaking at a meeting at the Taichung City Council on Tuesday, Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) pledged to crack down on violence and gang-related activities.
The city’s police department on Thursday launched a campaign targeting criminals and organized crime groups in a bid to restore public order, Lu said.
From Sunday, 19 people with suspected links to the trio — including a man surnamed Hsu (許) who was accused of operating three illegal gambling Web sites, his wife and three assistants — have been apprehended in Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung on gambling-related charges and for contravening the Organized Crime Prevention Act (組織犯罪防制條例) and the Money Laundering Control Act (洗錢防制法).
Hsu, his wife and the three assistants were on Tuesday released on bail ranging from NT$50,000 to NT$700,000.
Police said Chang had managed and invested in gambling Web sites owned by Hsu.
They added that Lee and Chen used to work for him.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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