The New Taipei City District Court has sentenced a man to five months in jail for allegedly putting rat poison in a water storage tank over a disagreement with a tenant, causing illness and skin rashes to a family.
The man, surnamed Hung (洪), can pay a fine in lieu of jail time, the court said.
The incident took place in August 2020, when building resident Yang (楊) and his family experienced swelling, red skin, rashes and other conditions, the ruling said.
Photo: Taipei Times file
The family also said that the water had an odd smell and found green-blue particles floating inside their water storage tank, it said.
Yang reported the incident to police, and lab testing found that the particles contained the ingredients of rat poison.
About a week later, Hung attempted to poison the water again, but was unable to due to a lock, the ruling said.
Yang’s wife saw Hung on the camera feed and ran to the roof to confront him, and caught him pouring the contents of a plastic bottle over the side of the building, it said.
Police gathered some of the discarded contents, which lab tests confirmed to contain the components of rat poison, it said.
At a hearing, Hung said he had poisoned the tank over a personal dispute with Yang, who had served as the chairman of the building’s management committee.
Hung said he had disagreements and filed complaints over the use of public space in the building, and tried to resolve the problems with Yang, but did not get the results he wanted.
He said he also resented that Yang “monopolized” the chairman position for more than two decades.
Hung said that he had put “fertilizer materials” into the tank to “teach a lesson” to Yang.
The court found Hung guilty of “causing injury to others,” based on surveillance camera footage, eyewitness testimony, police statements and firsthand accounts from police.
The court rejected prosecutors’ charge of “placing poisonous or harmful substances in water for public use,” which carried a more severe punishment, as the tank was privately owned and not a communal water source for the whole building, the ruling said.
Yang’s daughter-in-law said that the sentence was too lenient and the family would consider appealing the ruling.
“The incident made all six members of our family sick. We still suffer from the fear that the water tank could be contaminated by rat poison,” she said.
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