Police yesterday said they are targeting weapons dealers and homemade firearms manufacturers, as officers assigned to both the March 19 shooting investigation and the search for fugitives Chang Hsi-ming (
Police are investigating people with access or connections to homemade 8mm and 9mm pistols or bullets in relation to the shooting of the president and the vice president. These were the two kinds of bullets used in the March 19 incident.
Related to the search for the outlows Chang and Chen, who are wanted after a gun battle in Tainan County in July, police recently identified a weapons dealer who allegedly provided weapons -- believed to include pistols, rifles and even grenades -- to the pair.
"By focusing on manufacturers and dealers, it will save us a lot of time investigating these two cases," said Tsai Hsiang-chun (蔡祥春), head of the Criminal Investigation Section of the Ta-an Precinct under the Taipei City Police Department.
To locate and arrest Chang and Chen, the National Police Agency's Criminal Investigation Bureau Secretary-General Frank Chiu (
Tsai just joined the team as he was recently promoted. He will become the new deputy detective of the Fourth Division next month.
"We have located a gun dealer and he allegedly helped Chang and Chen with weapons," Tsai said.
"We are waiting to collect more evidence before we bring this guy downtown."
According to the precinct, Tsai was promoted and invited to join the team because of his experience investigating complicated criminal cases.
In addition to many kidnapping cases, he was the lead officer in the Chu Mei-feng (璩美鳳) sex-VCD case, as well as the sex case of former Chinese Nationalist Party lawmaker Huang Hsien-chou (
In the meantime, the precinct also arrested Chang Ching-cheng (
Tsai said postal workers noted that the parts were "weird" when the package went through the X-ray machine, so they notified police immediately.
Police officers arrived at Chang Ching-cheng's residence with the postal worker and arrested him when he signed for the package.
Chang Ching-cheng told police he bought the pistol parts from Ebay web sites in the US and Germany and paid for them in US dollars. He said he was simply curious and ordered the parts to see if he could assemble them.
Police said a 9mm pistol can cost approximately NT$200,000 if bought illegally, but that Chang Ching-cheng had only spent approximately NT$10,000 for the parts.
"Mail order through the Internet will become a big [loop]hole for us when it comes to illegal weapons," Tsai said.
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