Taiwan court releases train crash suspect on bond as families mourn 51 dead

As the family members mourned the dead at the train crash site that took lives of 51 people, a Taiwan court on Saturday released on bond the manager of a construction site whose truck authorities believe caused the train accident.

The crash on Friday was Taiwan’s worst rail accident in seven decades, when an express train hit the truck that had slid down a bank beside the track from the building site. The site’s manager is suspected of having failed to properly engage the truck’s brake.

The train, with almost 500 people aboard, was travelling from Taipei, the capital, to Taitung on the east coast when it derailed in a tunnel just north of the city of Hualien. Forty one people are in hospital, from among the 188 reported injured.

Prosecutors had applied to a court to detain the manager on charges of causing death by negligence, a justice ministry official told reporters on Saturday.

But a court in Hualien released the manager, Lee Yi-hsiang, on a bond of T$500,000 ($17,525), although it restricted him from leaving Taiwan for eight months and said he had to stay in Hualien.

The court said that while the truck’s fall into the path of the train was possibly due to negligence, there was “no possibility of conspiracy”.

Yu Hsiu-duan, head of the Hualien prosecutors’ office, said they were not pleased with the decision.

“The court said there was no reason to keep him in custody,” she told reporters. “The court changed it to a surety of $T500,000.”

Lee’s court-appointed lawyer declined to comment to reporters as he left the court.

Lin Jinn-tsun, head of the Justice Ministry’s Prosecutorial Affairs Department, said they had lodged an appeal against the decision to release Lee on bond.

Family members visited the site on Saturday afternoon to mourn the dead, some crying out “Come back!”, and bringing personal belongings with them like dolls.

The youngest person confirmed to have died was a six-year- old girl, the oldest a 79-year-old man, according to a government-issued casualty list.

Rescue work

Workers have begun moving the train’s rear portion, which was relatively unscathed as it had stopped outside the tunnel away from the accident spot. Other mangled sections remained in the tunnel, where fire department official Wu Liang-yun said more bodies were likely to be found.

“We’re still carrying out rescue work,” he added.

President Tsai Ing-wen visited hospitals in Hualien to speak to family members and survivors, thanking ordinary people and non-government groups for efforts to help.

“This shows the good side of Taiwanese society,” she said.

The government has ordered flags flown at half mast for three days in mourning, while the de facto French embassy in Taipei confirmed that one of its citizens had died in the crash.

Taiwan’s transport ministry said two U.S. citizens were among the dead, while two Japanese, an Australian and a Chinese citizen were among the injured.

In a rare sign of goodwill from China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory, President Xi Jinping expressed his condolences over the crash, state news agency Xinhua said.

The accident happened at the start of a long holiday weekend. The train was packed with tourists and residents going home for the traditional Tomb Sweeping Day to clean the graves of ancestors.

Taiwan has no domestic travel curbs as the COVID-19 pandemic is well under control, with only 43 active cases in hospital.

Taiwan’s worst train crash was in 1948, when 64 people are estimated to have died when a train caught fire.