A 63-year-old man accused of fatally stabbing a married couple in September last year was indicted for double homicide on Friday, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty in the case, the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office said.
Capital punishment is being sought because the suspect, identified by his last name Wu (吳), showed no remorse over his actions, the office said in a news release.
The victims were a married couple who lived above Wu with their two young children in an apartment building in Lingya District (苓雅).
Photo: Huang Liang-chieh, Taipei Times
On the morning of Sept. 15 last year, Wu was apparently annoyed by the noise his neighbors were making and knocked on the door of their residence to complain, police said in their investigation.
After the couple’s children opened the door, the suspect stormed in and allegedly attacked the wife, aged 35, then the husband, 36, who was still asleep at the time, police said.
The crime was carried out in front of the children, who later alerted an apartment security guard.
Police responding to an emergency call found the couple dead at the scene.
Wu was arrested in Pingtung County hours after fleeing from the scene of the double murder.
During questioning, police said the suspect admitted to disposing of the clothes he wore during the attack and the murder weapon.
Explaining their choice to seek the death penalty to the Kaohsiung District Court, prosecutors on Friday said that Wu never formally apologized to the victims’ families.
Also, if he were to be sentenced to life imprisonment and somehow met the requirements for parole and was later released from prison, he would be nearly 90 years old, and by that time there would be no possibility or need for him to be rehabilitated, prosecutors said.
Considering that most countries issue more than five denominations of banknotes, the central bank has decided to redesign all five denominations, the bank said as it prepares for the first major overhaul of the banknotes in more than 24 years. Central bank Governor Yang Chin-lung (楊金龍) is expected to report to the Legislative Yuan today on the bank’s operations and the redesign’s progress. The bank in a report sent to the legislature ahead of today’s meeting said it had commissioned a survey on the public’s preferences. Survey results showed that NT$100 and NT$1,000 banknotes are the most commonly used, while NT$200 and NT$2,000
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday reported the first case of a new COVID-19 subvariant — BA.3.2 — in a 10-year-old Singaporean girl who had a fever upon arrival in Taiwan and tested positive for the disease. The girl left Taiwan on March 20 and the case did not have a direct impact on the local community, it said. The WHO added the BA.3.2 strain to its list of Variants Under Monitoring in December last year, but this was the first imported case of the COVID-19 variant in Taiwan, CDC Deputy Director-General Lin Ming-cheng (林明誠) said. The girl arrived in Taiwan on
South Korea is planning to revise its controversial electronic arrival card, a step Taiwanese officials said prompted them to hold off on planned retaliatory measures, a South Korean media report said yesterday. A Yonhap News Agency report said that the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs is planning to remove the “previous departure place” and “next destination” fields from its e-arrival card system. The plan, reached after interagency consultations, is under review and aims to simplify entry procedures and align the electronic form with the paper version, a South Korean ministry official said. The fields — which appeared only on the electronic form
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) is suspending retaliation measures against South Korea that were set to take effect tomorrow, after Seoul said it is updating its e-arrival system, MOFA said today. The measures were to be a new round of retaliation after Taiwan on March 1 changed South Korea's designation on government-issued alien resident certificates held by South Korean nationals to "South Korea” from the "Republic of Korea," the country’s official name. The move came after months of protests to Seoul over its listing of Taiwan as "China (Taiwan)" in dropdown menus on its new online immigration entry system. MOFA last week
RSS