Authorities in Tainan have detained a man and plan to charge him with manslaughter after he allegedly ran over his former wife and her lawyer in front of a courthouse in a car on Monday, killing the lawyer and leaving the woman in critical condition.
Hung Tang-hsing (洪當興), 44, was on Tuesday detained by the police, while his former wife, Lee Yi-hui (李怡慧), was being treated for internal bleeding and multiple injuries at Tainan’s National Cheng Kung University Hospital.
Huang Cheng-hsiung (黃政雄), Lee’s divorce lawyer, died after the incident on Monday.
Images from surveillance cameras show Lee walking alongside Huang after Monday’s court hearing in the divorce case when a speeding minivan plowed into them from behind, leaving the two lying on the road. Hung stopped and emerged from the car, then made calls with a mobile phone.
The police quoted Hung as saying he got angry at what was said during the hearing and riled up when he saw the two walking together outside the court, and he wanted to “intimidate” them.
However, “I was overcome with emotion and lost my mind, causing me to speed up and knock them over,” police quoted Hung as saying.
According to court officials, Hung and Lee were married for 13 years and had two children, but Hung filed for divorce last year after running into financial difficulty after he lost his restaurant job in Tainan.
Lee’s friends said the couple had their differences on various family and personal issues, and the two had separated, with Lee last year moving back to live with her family in Taoyuan.
The Taiwan Bar Association and its local chapters, which represent most of nation’s lawyers, issued a joint statement condemning the violence and urging the judiciary to hand Hung a heavy sentence to protect all legal practitioners.
“We call on the Ministry of Justice and the Judicial Yuan to examine the security issue for public at judiciary agencies. A secure environment for the public and legal practitioners must be guaranteed to ensure their safety when attending court hearings,” the statement said.
“Suspect Hung acted in total disregard of the rule of law and he held the judiciary in contempt through his violent act. If he does not receive a heavy punishment for this intentional killing, then it will lead to copycat actions by other criminals,” an official at the Taiwan Bar Association said. “We urge the judges to consider this case seriously, protect the personal safety of all lawyers and restore the public’s trust in the judiciary.”
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