Police are looking for a man surnamed Su (蘇) in connection with the execution-style killing of two men in Taoyuan believed to be connected to a money dispute.
Police yesterday said that preliminary findings pointed to Su, 36, who has a previous conviction for property damage.
There are likely to be accomplices in the killings, which took place on Thursday night, police added.
The bodies of two men, surnamed Yang (楊), 28, and Chen (陳), 27, were found in an apartment suite on Taoyuan’s Zhonghua Road, police officials said.
Each had a bullet wound in the head and likely were shot at close range, they said.
Su was identified from surveillance camera footage, which showed him walking up stairs to meet Yang and Chen in the apartment, police said, adding that three other people — who reported the killings — were in the room when Su arrived.
He entered and departed the building alone carrying what might have been a handgun in a plastic bag, police said.
Su apparently knew Yang and Chen, as telephone records showed he had called them to arrange a meeting on Thursday evening, police said, adding that he told the three other people in the room to leave.
When the three people returned after a few hours, they found the bodies and called the police.
Preliminary findings indicated that Su was a hired by gangsters to kill Yang and Chen over suspicion that they pocketed money from a fraud operation, police said.
Taoyuan Prosecutor Liu Wei-hung (劉威宏), who is leading the investigation, said that Su likely was hired and had accomplices, as video footage showed he made a phone call as he left the building and was picked up by others in a car.
Police are tracing Su’s contacts and checking his phone records, Liu said.
In other news, family members said they do not believe information released by Cambodian police saying that three Taiwanese men found dead with bullet wounds in an apartment in Phnom Penh were killed in a murder-suicide incident.
Reports from Cambodia said that Phnom Penh police on Sunday found the three bodies, and recovered a Glock 19 pistol and 41 bullets at the apartment.
Taiwanese authorities later said that the three men, surnamed Lin (林), Yeh (葉) and Cheng (程), were from Tainan and had criminal records with involvement in organized crime.
The three men traveled to Cambodia separately this year, with people who knew them saying they worked for telecom scam groups and possibly human trafficking operations.
A man surnamed Hsu (徐), an uncle of one of the three, told reporters he did not believe the information released by the Cambodian police.
“The three were good friends, with Lin seen as the elder brother who took care of them well,” Hsu said. “The other two respected Lin and helped each other to live and work in Cambodia.”
“When they were in Taiwan, they were often together and I never saw them quarreling, so it is not likely that they would fight over a woman then kill themselves,” he said. “They must have opened the door to someone they knew who turned out to be a killer.”
Forensic expert Kao Ta-cheng (高大成) said that the report from the Cambodian police changed several times, with their initial report being a killing due to a dispute over money, likely involving drug trafficking.
Photographs from the scene that were circulated online also indicate that the murder-suicide idea is flawed, Kao said.
“If they were shooting at each other, the bodies would not have fallen the way they are shown,” he said.
“Most suicides are performed in a kneeling position,” he said, adding that there were no signs of fighting in the room.
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater