The girlfriend of an Australian man who was sickened by rat poison has been ordered not to leave the country, Taipei prosecutors said yesterday, after reports that she told prosecutors she had prepared the poison for herself.
Australian Alex Shorey, 24, left Taiwan on Wednesday on a medical evacuation flight bound for Queensland, where he is continuing to receive treatment after ingesting the rat poison superwarfarin.
Authorities searched the residence of Shorey’s Taiwanese girlfriend on Wednesday as the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office opened an investigation into the case.
Photo: CNA
Also conducting investigations are the Taipei Police Department’s Criminal Investigation Division and Xinyi Precinct, which interviewed people of interest in the case and reviewed Shorey’s medical records.
The girlfriend was on Thursday questioned and ordered not to leave the country, although she has not been arrested or charged, the office said yesterday.
The office declined to release the content of her statement, citing an active investigation.
However, Chinese-language media reported that she said she prepared the poison with the intent of taking her own life after quarreling with Shorey, who then accidentally ingested it instead.
Prosecutors said they are considering taking a statement remotely from Shorey after he recovers.
Both of Shorey’s parents were interviewed by authorities prior to their departure from Taiwan, they added.
The office also ruled out the possibility of food poisoning or illegal drugs as the cause of the poisoning.
The cause would be determined after further investigation, it added.
A probe into whether Shorey ingested the poison through contaminated drugs was launched in response to media reports on the topic and is being led by the office’s chief drug prosecutor, the office said in a statement on Thursday.
The investigation comes after the Chinese-language United Daily News published a letter on Monday by doctor Tao Hung-yang (陶宏洋) who said that Shorey’s condition might have been caused by contaminated synthetic marijuana products.
Shorey, a native of Toowoomba in southern Queensland, was a student in a Chinese-language program at New Taipei City’s Tamkang University from September last year to February.
In the middle of last month he was admitted to Taipei Medical University Hospital with symptoms including nausea, vomiting, nosebleeds, bloody urine and coagulation disorders.
Doctors determined that he had likely been poisoned by superwarfarin, an anticoagulant rodenticide, and after he experienced an allergic reaction to his initial treatment, doctors adjusted his medication and his condition began to stabilize.
This story has been amended since it was first published.
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
RSS