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.
A magnitude 4.9 earthquake struck off Tainan at 11:47am today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The hypocenter was 32.3km northeast of Tainan City Hall at a depth of 7.3km, CWA data showed. The intensity of the quake, which gauges the actual effect of a seismic event, measured 4 in Tainan and Chiayi County on Taiwan's seven-tier intensity scale, the data showed. The quake had an intensity of 3 in Chiayi City and County, and Yunlin County, while it was measured as 2 in Kaohsiung, Nantou County, Changhua County, Taitung County and offshore Penghu County, the data showed. There were no immediate reports of
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