The Taichung District Court yesterday approved the detention of a 66-year-old man suspected of setting fire to his home, killing five members of his family in Taichung’s Dali District (大里) on Friday.
Taichung prosecutors filed the request late on Friday to detain the suspect, identified by the surname Chen (陳), due to the seriousness of the crime and over concerns he that he could destroy evidence or flee the country, the court said.
Chen’s 62-year-old wife and their 38-year-old daughter, 32-year-old son, and two grandsons aged 11 and 6 months old experienced cardiac arrest by the time they were evacuated by firefighters from the three-story house, the Taichung Fire Bureau said.
Photo: CNA
They were pronounced dead upon arriving at a hospital.
The suspect was the only one at the scene who escaped from the blaze.
Chen allegedly told firefighters that he set fire the house using sorghum liquor and alcohol while he was trying to drive away a snake in the house, the bureau said.
The case has been transferred to the Taichung District Prosecutors Office, where Chen is being investigated on suspicion of arson and homicide.
His eldest son, who was at work in Chiayi at the time, told reporters that his father was recently diagnosed with delirium.
Prosecutors recommended to the court that the suspect be detained at a psychiatric hospital or other mental institution during the investigation.
Lee Ching-ching (李進清), head of the court’s administrative section, told reporters on Saturday that the placement recommendation was denied, as Chen’s medical diagnosis could not be confirmed.
It was not immediately known whether the court would order its own medical examination of Chen to assess a mental diagnosis.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
RSS