Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/03/29
By Christie Chen, CNA staff reporter

Mother of Little Bulb: “Fortunately, I had held you tightly and told you I loved you every day.”

(Claire Wang gave media the permission to show the photo of her, her husband and Little Bulb)

It was hard even for strangers to talk about the slaying of a young girl in Taipei on Monday but the child’s 36-year-old mother Claire Wang stepped in front of the TV cameras just hours after to give an account of the horrific incident.

Although she was visibly shaken by the death of her 4-year-old at the hands of a knife wielding man, Wang was able to coherently relate the gruesome details of the incident that took place in front of her eyes.

Even more remarkable were her dispassionate comments amid widespread calls for stiffer laws in the country against the type of crime she had just witnessed.

“I believe the suspects in these kinds of random killings lose their minds at that moment,” Wang told TV reporters at the police station Monday.     [FULL  STORY]

SORRY TALE:The suspect’s father said that his son had a history of mental illness, had been unemployed for a long time and relied on his parents for financial support

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 30, 2016
By: Jason Pan / Staff reporter

The Shilin District Court approved an application by prosecutors for Wang Ching-yu (王景玉),

the suspect in the killing of a four-year-old girl in Taipei on Monday, to be detained incommunicado before he was taken to the Taipei Detention Center yesterday morning.

Officials at Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office said they plan to indict the 33-year-old Wang on murder charges, as the judicial investigation continued into the decapitation of the child in front of her mother on a street in Neihu District (內湖).

“There is sufficient evidence against the suspect, surnamed Wang, and due to flight risk and possible tampering with evidence, an application was made to the Shilin District Court for the suspect to be detained incommunicado, which was granted,” a prosecutors’ office statement said.

It said that prosecutors have contacted executives from the non-governmental Association for Victims Support, which sent representatives to the girl’s home yesterday to offer legal assistance and explain procedures of seeking financial compensation.      [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan Today
Date: March 29, 2016

Pension reform, long-term care, high housing prices and taxation equity are the biggest

policymaking challenges facing Taiwan’s incoming government, according to a recent poll conducted by Taipei City-based newspaper United Daily News.

The results reflect high public expectations of ROC President-elect Tsai Ing-wen and her Democratic Progressive Party administration after taking office May 20. The DPP chairwoman’s campaign platform centered on distributive justice, among other policy priorities.

Taiwan’s pension crisis is an intergenerational concern and tops the list of concerns for those aged 20-29 and 30-49, the telephone poll involving 1,019 adults found.

The country’s four state-backed systems face serious challenges including insufficient funding, differing benefits for retirees and an unduly heavy contributor burden on future generations. ROC National Audit Office data forecast the systems face bankruptcy beginning 2019 if no action is taken.     [FULL  STORY]

 

BBC News, Taipei
March 29, 2016
By: Cindy Sui

 

A day after a man grabbed a four-year-old girl off her bicycle and decapitated her with a

cleaver in broad daylight, Taiwan is in shock.

“A mother couldn’t protect her child even though she was standing right near her. How can we feel assured that our children will be safe?” asked Lindy Wang, a mother of three.

On Monday night, anger poured out on the streets when crowds surrounded the suspect, a man in his 40s, as he was being led into a police station. Some punched him.

Schools were on alert on Tuesday and police officers were dispatched to a school the assailant was believed to have been headed to when he came across the girl.

The killing was the latest in a string of random attacks on the island and the third against children in the past four years.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-03-29
By: Matthew Strong, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je expressed concern Tuesday that the wide reporting of the decapitation of a little girl would provoke a copycat effect.

After the death of the 4-year-old in the capital’s Neihu District Monday, a police officer was stabbed at the Xinbeitou Mass Rapid Transit station and an environmental worker faced an attacker in New Taipei City’s Shulin District. Both victims were out of critical danger, reports said.

Ko told a meeting of neighborhood wardens Tuesday afternoon that the public should “keep cool” when considering those violent incidents. He said he feared that if the media kept broadcasting news about those attacks, there would be a copycat effect, so he wanted to call for reason.

The mayor told the neighborhood wardens they were the elected officials standing closest to the public, so they could play a valuable role in identifying problem cases and in promoting social cohesion. Local activity centers and neighborhoods should organize joint events to draw those people out of their homes and have them participate in their community’s social life, Ko said, adding that it was impossible to rely entirely on police and social workers.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/03/29
By: Wang Hung-kuo, Chang Min-hsuan and Elaine Hou

Taipei, March 29 (CNA) Two new random attacks occurred in northern Taiwan Tuesday,

following the gruesome killing of a 4-year-old girl in a random attack in Taipei just a day earlier.

New Taipei police received a report at about 1 p.m. Tuesday that an environmental services worker had been attacked by a stranger armed with a saw as he was cleaning and disinfecting the environment in the city’s Shulin District.

The 48-year-old worker suffered a 5-centimeter laceration to his left wrist and was rushed to Far Eastern Memorial Hospital for emergency treatment, the police said. The man said he did not know the attacker, the police added.

No one else was injured in the attack.

The attacker, a 23-year-old man identified only by his surname Yu, has been arrested. Yu, who works as a decorator, claimed that the attack on the cleaning worker was to “protect cockroaches,” according to a preliminary police investigation.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/03/28
By: Lu Hsin-hui, Ku Chuan, Justin Su, Chen Chun-hua and Evelyn Kao

Taipei, March 28 (CNA) The brutal beheading of a 4-year-old girl in an apparent random attack in Taipei on Monday has renewed debate over the death penalty, which is still carried out in Taiwan, with advocates asking opponents if they still favored abolishing it.

A 33-year-old man has been detained in connection with the gruesome killing of the girl as she and her mother were on their way to a subway station in Neihu District in northern Taipei late Monday morning.

The suspect grabbed the child from behind and decapitated her with a cleaver. The girl died on the spot, according to police.

The tragedy sparked a heated debate in the Internet community, with Lin Hsin-yi (林欣怡), the executive director of the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty, saying that she was “very, very, very sad” about the tragedy on a Facebook post.

She wrote that she really wanted to find a solution on how to stop such incidents.    [FULL STORY]

Taiwan News
Date: 2016-03-28
By: George Liao, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

On Monday morning a four-year-old girl was attacked randomly and beheaded by a man

surnamed Wang, who was arrested by the police at the crime scene and was said to have medical records at the Songde Branch of the Taipei City Hospital.

Taipei City Fire Department received a report sometime after 11 AM that a four-year-old girl was dead after being beheaded by a 33-year-old man at an empty lot located on Huanshan Road in Neihu District, Taipei City.

Yang Kun-ming, head of investigation at Taipei City Police Department’s Neihu Precinet, said that the little girl was attacked by the man while she was riding a bike with her mother and grandfather on the street. The man kept chopping the girl’s neck from the back with a cleaver, and the brutal act caused the girl to die instantly as her head was severed from her body, Yang said.

The police, who rushed to the scene of the crime after receiving the report, arrested the suspect and brought him back to the nearby Xihu Police Station for questioning, Yang said, adding that the motive of the crime was still under investigation. The mother, who witnessed the process of the crime, knelt down beside the body of her daughter, choking with sobs, Yang said.     [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 2016/03/28
By: Yiu Kai-hsiang, Lu Hsin-hui and Christie Chen

Taipei, March 28 (CNA) A man detained for allegedly killing a 4-year-old girl in an apparent

random attack in Taipei on Monday had previously been treated at a psychiatric hospital in the city, according to Taipei police.

Records showed that the 33-year-old man had sought treatment at the Taipei City Hospital Songde Branch, a public psychiatric hospital, but he does not have a government-issued disability card, the police said.

The hospital confirmed that the suspect had sought treatment there once in 2014, but added that it does not prove he has a mental illness. At the time, the man admitted to taking drugs, but a drug test came up negative, the hospital said.

It said further investigation would be required to find out whether the man had sought psychiatric treatment elsewhere.

The suspect, identified only by his surname Wang, has also been convicted for drug offenses and is currently unemployed, the police said.     [FULL  STORY]

DISTURBED:Police arrested a man at the scene of the attack who has convictions for drug offenses, and is reported to have sought psychiatric help in 2014

Taipei Times
Date: Mar 29, 2016
By: Hsu Sheng-lun and Jonathan Chin / Staff reporter, with staff writer and CNA

A four-year-old girl was yesterday decapitated in an apparently random attack in Taipei in

full view of her mother, police said.

An unemployed man, identified as Wang Ching-yu (王景玉), has been detained in connection with the gruesome killing.

The attack occurred at about 11am when the girl, surnamed Liu (劉), and her mother were on their way to an MRT rail station in northern Taipei’s Neihu District (內湖) to meet the girl’s grandfather and two of her siblings for lunch.

Liu was riding a bicycle on Huanshan Road Sec 1, when she was attacked, Taipei City Police Department Neihu Precinct investigation unit head Yang Kun-ming (楊坤明) said, adding that the attacker grabbed the girl from behind and decapitated her with a cleaver.     [FULL  STORY]