Hsinchu District Court on Thursday handed down the death sentence to a man found guilty of arson that resulted in the death of eight of his family members in June last year.
The murders by Chen Yen-hsiang (陳彥翔) were cruel and evidence of the crime was clear, the court said in a press release.
In the pursuit of justice and the preservation of social order, the death penalty was deemed necessary, and Chen was further stripped of his civil rights for life, the court said.
Photo: Tsai Chang-sheng, Taipei Times
However, the ruling can still be appealed.
Chen, plagued by mounting debts and financial woes, often engaged in heated arguments with his parents, with whom he resided and ran a tire shop on Dongda Road in Hsinchu City, the court said.
On the evening of June 15, Chen left home after quarreling with his parents and returned with 20 liters of gasoline, which he doused across the tire shop located on the ground floor of a two-story building where the extended family lived, before igniting a fire using a lighter and tissues. The fire quickly spread to the second floor.
Chen’s father managed to escape from the building, but his mother was trapped inside while trying to alert other family members on the second floor, all of whom were killed by the fire, including Chen’s wife and three children aged seven, six and three, his younger sister, sister-in-law and one-year-old niece.
Chen’s arson caused the death of four innocent young children, simply because of quarrels over family matters and his belief that his parents were unfairly biased toward other siblings, the court said.
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