The Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office has indicted a 37-year-old woman for allegedly scalding her mother to death in a bathtub.
On June 9 last year, the mother, who was in her 70s, was reported dead in the bathroom at home.
While relatives initially thought she had died from a bath-related accident, prosecutors who inspected the body noticed that there was swelling and peeled off skin.
Photo: Chien Li-chung, Taipei Times
A forensic report concluded that the mother had second-degree burns over a large part of the lower half of her body, which sent her into cardiogenic shock, leading to her death.
Prosecutors said the daughter, surnamed Pan (潘), who was unemployed, initially denied knowing what happened to her mother, but later allegedly confessed to her involvement after the coroner concluded the autopsy.
Prosecutors quoted Pan as saying that she was upset with her mother for not buying her Golden Ray puppetry discs, adding that she had added cold water to the bathtub and it had not been her intention to hurt her mother.
Police and prosecutors found many A4 sheets of paper pasted around the house and on the bathroom walls blaming Pan’s mother for not keeping her promises to do things for her.
Prosecutors reconstructed the scene based on the water stains in the bathtub and the places where peeling skin had stuck to the bathtub and the edge of the door.
The hot water coming out of the faucet, as well as in the bathtub after being in contact with air, could reach up to 60°C, prosecutors said.
The mother’s severe burns could only have been caused by sitting in the hot water for at least five hours, they said.
Prosecutors on Wednesday charged Pan with intentionally injuring others, resulting in death, stating that Pan, aware that her mother’s sense of temperature in the lower half of her body was impaired due to a stroke, still allegedly demanded her mother to get in the bath and stay there for a long period.
Chi Ching-chi (紀景琪), a doctor at Linkou Chang Gung Memorial Hospital’s Department of Dermatology, said that it would usually take water of more than 70°C to inflict second-degree burns.
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