4 die in Taipei subway attack horror
Print Edition
A UNIVERSITY student wielding a knife attacked passengers on a subway train in Taipei yesterday, killing four people and injuring at least 21 others, police said.
The seemingly random attack began at the start of evening rush hour on a train on the Banqiao line, which leads to the southwestern suburbs of Taipei.
Photographs showed the floor of one of the train’s cars and the adjacent station platform splattered with blood and strewn with discarded backpacks, umbrellas and other items.
Taiwan media described panicked passengers rushing from the train when it arrived at Jiangzicui Station, shouting to those waiting on the platform to flee.
They said security guards quickly called police, who arrived within minutes and took the man into custody. They said the man reeked of alcohol.
“Everyone in the train was trying to run to the other side. No one tried to stop the criminal suspect,” a woman told reporters at a local hospital.
She had been stabbed in the hand.
Pictures showed the attacker handcuffed sitting against a wall, his face covered in blood. He was dressed in white tennis shoes, black shorts and a red T-shirt.
Murder charges
A police spokesman said police were preparing to charge the suspect with murder.
Chen Kuo-en, police chief of Xinbeishi, where Jiangzicui Station is located, told reporters that the attacker was a 21-year-old second-year student at Tunghai University in the central city of Taichung in Taiwan.
Chen said the man told police he had wanted to do something “shocking and big” and had been plotting to carry out such an attack since he was a child.
Chen said no other motive was known and the suspect had no record of mental health problems. “He’s aware of the legal responsibility of his crime,” Chen said.
A Tunghai University official confirmed that the suspect was a student there and said a school counselor had seen him in April after he posted a message on his Facebook page saying he “wanted to do something big this year.”
However, the matter was dropped after the counselor reported nothing unusual, the official added.
Chen said the suspect had grown up around the station and might have chosen it because of his familiarity with the area.
He said the student had boarded the train two stations earlier and began stabbing passengers after it passed the first one.
Police said the suspect used a 10-centimeter knife in the attack and was also carrying a second blade three times as long.
Although he had been drinking, a breath test showed that he was below the legal limit.
Police said a 47-year-old woman and two men, one in his 20s and the other in his 30s, were declared dead on arrival at hospital. A 62-year-old woman died in surgery four hours after the attack.
The suspect struck his victims in the chest and stomach.
Subway services were restored about an hour after the attack with police officers assigned to all trains and tighter security checks at stations.
Street crime is extremely rare in Taipei, one of Asia’s safest cities, and violent incidents are practically unheard of in the city’s extensive and well managed subway system.
(AP)
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