Chiayi woman indicted for children's deaths in house fire

Taipei, Sept. 23 (CNA) A Chiayi County woman whose 3 and 4-year-old children died in a house fire after she left them home alone last year was indicted on Monday for negligent homicide, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment by the Chiayi District Prosecutors Office, the case stems from a fire that broke out for undetermined reasons at a sanheyuan-style home in Chiayi's Chingpu Village on the morning of Oct. 16, 2023.

Firefighters responding to the blaze had to break down the locked front door of the home, where they found a 4-year-old girl and a 3-year-old boy lying on a bed, unconscious and with extensive burns on their bodies.

Efforts to revive the children failed, and they were later pronounced dead.

While investigating the fire, prosecutors learned that the children's father and mother, surnamed Ho (何) and Chang (張) respectively, were both 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 7:30 a.m., prosecutors said.

Chang, meanwhile, left the house on her motorcycle at 9:56 a.m., leaving her 3 and 4-year-old children sleeping at home alone.

A neighbor reported a fire at the house at 10:34 a.m., while Chang returned home minutes later, at 10:39 a.m., prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, Chang denied during questioning that she had smoked a cigarette at home that morning. She also said that her two younger children did not know how to use a cigarette lighter, though they sometimes played by throwing them back and forth.

Chang told investigators 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, and in any case was not in the habit of throwing her cigarette butts in the garbage.

An investigation into the fire determined that it had broken out near the living room garbage can, and was "likely" caused by some embers.

The forensic specialist who examined the scene, however, said the fire could not be definitively linked to a smoldering cigarette butt, 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 setting fire to and destroying an occupied residence.

Instead, prosecutors charged Chang with negligent homicide, on the grounds that she had left children under the age of 7 unattended at home before the fire that led to their deaths.

Under the Criminal Code, negligently causing the death of another person is punishable by a maximum prison sentence of five years or a fine of up to NT$500,000 (US$15,571).