A judo coach who slammed a seven-year-old student to the floor multiple times with such force he ended up in a coma has been charged with physical assault resulting in serious injury and using a minor to commit a crime, the Taichung District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday.
The coach, surnamed Ho (何), was released on bail of NT$100,000 yesterday afternoon.
Ho was indicted in accordance with Article 112 of the Protection of Children and Youths Welfare and Rights Act (兒童及少年福利與權益保障法), as well as Article 277 of the Criminal Code, the office said in a statement.
The case stemmed from an incident during a class at a dojo in Taichung’s Fongyuan District (豐原) on April 21.
The boy’s father, surnamed Huang (黃), told a news conference two days later that Ho and an older student threw his son to the ground multiple times.
The boy begged Ho to stop, but the coach continued until his son became completely unresponsive and was rushed to hospital, the father said.
A medical examination showed that the boy suffered a severe brain injury. He underwent surgery, but remains in a coma as of press time last night.
Ho started to teach judo for free in Fongyuan in 2015, but is not a licensed judo instructor, the office’s statement said.
Ho also instructed other children to throw the boy, despite knowing that the boy did not possess the basic judo skills needed to ensure he landed safely when thrown, the office said, implying that Ho used minors to commit a crime.
Ho apparently began to deliberately hurt the boy after he refused to continue practicing and said “the coach is an idiot,” prosecutors said.
The coach went on to slam the boy more than 10 times even after he complained of a headache, thinking he was feigning an illness, the office said.
Although Ho stopped after the boy vomited, he continued throwing him after the venue was cleaned, the office said, adding that the boy’s head hit the floor several times.
During questioning, Ho insisted that the throws were part of normal training.
Ho had been detained since late April after the start of a judicial investigation, but was yesterday released on bail.
That drew a furious reaction from the boy’s mother, who said it was not fair.
“My son is still in a coma, fighting for his life in the hospital, but the coach has walked out of detention,” she said.
Additional reporting by Jason Pan
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