A Chiayi County woman whose two children died in a house fire after she left them home alone was yesterday indicted for negligent homicide, prosecutors said.
Early on Oct. 16 last year, firefighters responding to a blaze at a sanheyuan (三合院)-style home (a traditional three-section compound) broke down the locked front door to find a four-year-old girl and a three-year-old boy lying unconscious on a bed with extensive burns on their bodies, according to the indictment by the Chiayi District Prosecutors’ Office.
The children were pronounced dead at the scene.
Photo: Wang Shan-yan, Taipei Times
While investigating the fire, prosecutors learned that the children’s father and mother, surnamed Ho (何) and Chang (張) respectively, were smokers.
On the morning the fire occurred, Ho smoked a cigarette in the bathroom before waking up the couple’s three other children, all of whom, including Ho, left the house for work or school before 7:30am, prosecutors said.
Chang left the house on her motorcycle at 9:56am, leaving the other two children sleeping at home alone.
A neighbor reported the fire at 10:34am, and Chang returned home at 10:39am, prosecutors said.
Chang denied during questioning that she had smoked a cigarette at home that morning, the indictment said.
She also said that her children did not know how to use a cigarette lighter, although they threw them back and forth while playing, it said.
She told prosecutors that she had not noticed any smoke coming from the living room garbage can — near where the fire is believed to have started — before she left that morning, adding that she did not throw cigarette butts in the garbage.
An investigation found that the fire likely started near the living room garbage can, and was “likely” caused by some embers, the indictment said.
However, a forensic specialist who examined the scene said the fire could not be definitively linked to a smoldering cigarette, and that the two children did not appear to have been playing with a lighter.
For that reason, prosecutors said they did not have sufficient evidence to charge Chang or Ho with causing the fire.
They instead charged Chang with negligent homicide for leaving children younger than seven unattended at home.
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