Lee Hung-yuan (李鴻淵) was sentenced to death yesterday over the execution-style killing of four people in Nantou County last year, but the ruling can be appealed.
Lee confessed to the crime during the trial at the Nantou District Court.
Lee’s actions were premeditated and his killing of Lai Chih-ching (賴鋕卿), who inadvertently entered the murder site in Caotun Township (草屯), demonstrated Lee’s cold-bloodedness and inhumanity, making him eligible for capital punishment, prosecutors said.
Photo: Taipei Times file
Lai was the brother of Lai Min-nan (賴敏男), the sole survivor of the incident.
In a previous ruling on Jan. 17, Lai Yu-lung (賴裕隆), who purchased the murder weapon and helped Lee hide after the incident, was sentenced to four years and two months in prison.
The killings occurred on July 14 last year at Kang Jian Biotech Co, a developer of mushroom and fungus ingredients for traditional Chinese medicines.
Lee, a former employee of the company, shot five people with a modified T75 handgun, investigators said.
Lai Chih-ching, Lai Min-nan’s daughter, a section head surnamed Liu (劉) and an accountant surnamed Chang (張) died.
When detained the day after the incident, Lee told police that they were “revenge killings” due to old grievances.
Company employees said he had an argument with a supervisor over the improper handling of machinery eight years ago.
Lee quit his job soon after and a few weeks later, the supervisor was assaulted by a man wielding a metal bar, believed to be Lee.
Additional reporting by Jason Pan
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