TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Five people were arrested on Friday (Feb. 23) in connection with an abandoned body that was discovered along Taiwan’s Provincial Highway No. 9 in Yilan in January.
The corpse of an unidentified man was discovered in the woods along the highway on Jan. 29, sparking an investigation to determine his identity and manner of death, reported UDN. Authorities have determined that the man was a 28-year-old from Hualien, who joined a group of contract laborers in Taoyuan with connections to an unidentifed temple.
An autopsy of the body found that the man likely died due to internal bleeding caused by beating with a blunt object. His body was dumped along the highway, approximately 40 km from Yilan’s border with Hualien hours after he was already dead.
Police were able to identify several suspects by monitoring footage of vehicles in the area recorded by cameras along the highway.
On Thursday (Feb. 22), authorities identified 16 possible suspects in Taoyuan and Yilan, who were all detained for questioning. On Friday, five of the sixteen were arrested on suspicion of beating and killing the victim, and then dumping his body, reported LTN.
All five are in the custody of Yilan Prosecutors and the court has ordered them detained without bail pending indictment. The primary suspect is a 35-year-old man surnamed Lin (林), and the four secondary suspects are all in their 20s.
Although the investigation is ongoing, police suspect that the man angered Lin, a leader of the work group, who then punished the victim by having other group members beat him with a baseball bat. After they realized the victim was dead, they decided to dispose of the body.
Initially, they planned to take him back to Hualien, where he is from, but they stopped short on their journey from Taoyuan after they decided a wooded area off the road in Yilan was suitable. They dumped the body down a wooded slope, where it was discovered more than a week later.
The victim, who had no identifying documents, has not yet been publicly identified by law enforcement.
