Taichung prosecutors yesterday detained an unlicensed driver who is a suspect in a drunken hit-and-run crash that resulted in the death of a university student who worked as a part-time delivery driver.
In a statement early yesterday, the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office said a court approved its request to detain the male suspect, surnamed Wu (吳), on suspicion of drunk driving resulting in a death, fleeing the scene of an accident and public endangerment.
The Taichung Police Department said it received a call at 3:47am on Saturday about a car-on-motorcycle incident in the city’s Situn District (西屯) at the intersection of Liming Road and Kaisuan Road.
Photo: Chen Chien-chih, Taipei Times
Officers said that when they arrived at the scene, they found 22-year-old delivery driver, surnamed Chen (陳), who was lying on the ground near his motorcycle, but the car that had struck him was nowhere to be seen.
Chen was sent to a nearby hospital, but later died from his injuries, the department said.
Police sources said Chen was originally from northern Taiwan, but enrolled as an undergraduate student of medicine at a university in Kaohsiung.
He was living in Taichung as part of a senior year hospital internship program and was working part-time as a delivery driver to help with his family’s finances, police said.
After reviewing surveillance camera footage, police identified Wu, 23, as the driver of the other vehicle, and arrested him later that morning.
Following an investigation, police said Wu, who worked at a car wash, had borrowed the car from a friend, despite not having a driver’s license.
Wu had been out drinking and singing karaoke earlier that night, and was on his way home when he crashed into Chen. At the time of his arrest, a breathalyzer test showed that he had a blood alcohol content of 0.37 milligrams per liter (mg/L), well over the legal limit of 0.15 mg/L, police said.
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