The father of three children who were hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing on Thursday was granted one day’s prison leave the next day to visit two of them in hospital, said the Taichung Prison, where he has been serving a five-year sentence.
The man, surnamed Chen (陳), visited his two daughters on Friday night at Changhua Christian Hospital and Show Chwan Memorial Hospital, respectively, where they are both in intensive care, following the road incident in Changhua County, the prison said.
Chen has been referred to a counselor for mental support, it added.
Chen’s three children, all of
elementary-school age, were hit by a car on a pedestrian crossing in the county’s Shengang Township (伸港) at 6:21pm on Thursday, police said.
The two older siblings, two girls, sustained severe injuries, while their brother had bruises on his left foot, the hospitals where they were taken said.
One sister appears to have sustained serious brain damage, and the other one is intubated, as her blood pressure remains very low, they said.
Their brother, who was not hospitalized, on Friday said that when he and his sisters were crossing the street, they saw a car approaching, and his eldest sister pulled them into a run to get across the street quickly.
However, they were hit by the car when they were almost on the other side, he said.
The 73-year-old driver surnamed Hsiao (蕭) was driving without a license, the police said.
It has not yet been determined who had the right of way on the pedestrian crossing at the time of the incident, or how fast the car was going, police said, adding that the driver’s breath alcohol test was negative.
The three children are usually picked up from school by their uncle, who is their primary caretaker, but he was recovering on Thursday from eye surgery, therefore they had to go home by themselves, the school said.
The children’s parents are divorced, their grandfather said.
The three children have a very close relationship and they look out for each other and do the household chores together, he said.
Meanwhile, following criticism that the crossing where the incident happened is too long and oblique, a maintenance worker at the Highway Bureau said the agency and police have conducted an inspection of the incident site and found no problems with the signals or the line markings.
However, they would consider how to improve the crossing such as by marking out a pedestrian island, the worker said.
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
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
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 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