Taoyuan: The Taoyuan District Prosecutors Office on Tuesday indicted four individuals for abandoning an unconscious migrant worker instead of taking him to hospital.
According to Focus Taiwan, on Oct. 19, 2024, police received a report that the worker, a Thai national surnamed Pan, was found unconscious and foaming from the mouth on the side of an industrial road in Hsinchu County. The man was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead on Oct. 21, the prosecutors office said.
After an investigation by local police and the National Immigration Agency, it was found that Pan worked at a nearby livestock farm illegally after he absconded from his contracted job. Investigations also showed that another undocumented Thai migrant worker, identified by his surname Wei, who also worked at the farm, disappeared after Pan was found. Wei was later tracked down and taken in for questioning.
The indictment said Wei told authorities that Pan had collapsed while working. Their employer, surnamed Wei, and his wife, surnamed Huang, were afraid that their employment of undocumented foreign workers would be found out and so instead of rushing Pan to hospital, they called a taxi driver surnamed Yao to take Pan to the industrial road and dump him there, Wei said. The employer and his wife changed Pan's clothes to conceal his employment at the farm and burned evidence including his clothes and mobile phone, according to the indictment.
Yao was later asked to pose as a passerby who found Pan by the roadside, the indictment said. The employer, his wife, Wei, and Yao were all indicted in the case. The autopsy report showed that Pan suffered from an intracranial hematoma caused by trauma to the back of his head. The swelling in his brain and hemorrhage in his brainstem led to pneumonia complications, which caused his death, the indictment said. Pan also suffered from cirrhosis of the liver, which was an exacerbating factor in his death.
Because Pan had a high risk of death, the case did not constitute abandonment resulting in death, prosecutors said. Huang and Wei are currently in police custody, while Wei and Yao have been released on bail, according to the prosecutors office.