The man suspected of on Monday in Tainan killing two police officers — Tu Ming-cheng (?明誠), 36, and Tsao Jui-chieh (曹瑞傑), 27 — yesterday was denied bail and placed in judicial detention, while autopsies indicated that no bullets had struck the officers.
Prosecutors said that Lin Hsin-wu (林信吾), 46, would face murder, theft and armed robbery charges, as well as charges related to the possession of illegal firearms in contravention of the Controlling Guns, Ammunition and Knives Act (槍砲彈藥刀械管制條例).
They also confirmed that Lin had absconded from Mingde Minimum Security Prison in Tainan.
Photo: CNA
The Tainan District Court refused to grant Lin bail, citing the severity of the crimes and the likelihood that he would attempt to flee or tamper with evidence.
Coroners said that no bullet wounds were found on the bodies of the two officers.
Tu and Tsao died after sustaining stab wounds on Monday morning in Tainan’s Annan District (安南), the autopsy said.
Tu had 17 stabbing wounds and Tsao 38, with the fatal wound Tu sustained likely being a severed artery in the neck, while deep cuts to Tsao’s chest were probably what killed him, it said.
Lin served in the armed forces and had training in weapons use and close-combat fighting, Tainan police officials said.
He was a member of a military police unit in Yunlin County until 1998, they said.
He is divorced with three children, they said.
In 2019, he had a girlfriend who got pregnant, but Lin did not have a steady job, police officials said.
To get money, he robbed two convenience stores using an air-soft gun, they said, adding that he was sentenced to eight years, four months in prison.
As he displayed good behavior in prison, authorities in December last year approved his transfer to Mingde prison, they said.
A switchblade was recovered from near Lin’s abandoned motorcycle outside a high school about 1.3km from the crime scene, officials said.
Lin allegedly rode the motorcycle there to clean blood stains, and to discard the weapon and the vehicle, they said.
Tainan Police Chief Fang Yang-ning (方仰寧) said that the two slain officers, who were from the Minchuan Police Station of Tainan’s Second Precinct, received a call about a stolen motorcycle and went to investigate, with Tu on a police motorcycle and Tsao driving a cruiser to the area in Annan.
Lin told officials that he rode a motorcycle to bushes next to a cemetery, where he sought to rest and drink alcohol, when the two officers approached, Fang said.
Tu, who arrived on the scene first, asked Lin to provide identification, but he took out the knife when the officer came near, prompting Tu to deploy pepper spray, Fang said, citing Lin’s account.
Lin told his questioners that he became angry and lunged at Tu, Fang said.
During the struggle, Tu fired one shot from his pistol, which angered Lin further, Fang said.
By the time Tsao arrived, Lin had taken the pistol from Tu, who had been stabbed several times, and fired shots at the cruiser, Fang said.
Tsao approached Lin, but his military training enabled him to overpower Tsao, who he stabbed repeatedly “in a fit of anger,” Fang said, citing Lin’s statement.
There was a wrongful issuance of an alert to arrest a man who is not a suspect in the killings, Fang said.
Police initially named Chen Wei-chieh (陳偉捷) — a 25-year-old Tainan resident with a criminal record including theft and drug offenses — as a suspect, Fang said.
The two slain police officers had made a quick search of files of locals with a record of stealing vehicles and the file that was open on the computer when they departed was Chen’s, Fang said, adding that images they had of the suspect early in the investigation from surveillance cameras were not clear enough to rule Chen out, leading to the mistake.
Later on Monday, Tainan police passed on information to some media about a possible second suspect, but by the evening, evidence showed that Lin was the only suspect, Fang said.
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