Man sentenced to over 5 years for crashing truck into Taichung gym

Taichung, Oct. 12 (CNA) Taichung District Court found a man who deliberately crashed a pickup truck into a gym in Taichung in June guilty of attempted murder and sentenced him to more than five years in prison, according to the court decision made on Tuesday.

The convicted man, identified by his surname Lin (林), was driving the pickup truck, rented by a friend who was a passenger in the vehicle. He briefly stopped near a branch of Genghis Khan Fitness Club before driving the vehicle through the entrance to the gym on the evening of June 12, police determined based on footage recorded by a nearby security camera.

The driver was arrested by the police after the incident was reported to the authorities at 7:41 p.m.

Lin, aged 31 at the time of the crash, denied he intended to cause fatalities, claiming he had checked the entrance to the gym, making sure no one was there before driving the vehicle into the entrance after 7 p.m.

The investigators found Lin had been rejected after applying for a job at the gym in May, and sent text messages to the fitness club chain's founder Holger Chen (陳之漢), who made his name in recent years as an online influencer.

The three judges presiding over the court hearing dismissed Lin's claim, noting the defendant did not warn customers and employees in the gym by honking the horn.

The fact that Lin was found to have accelerated instead of hitting the brakes or turning to avoid the crash, increased the risk of casualties inside the gym, according to the court decision.

Lin may have had difficulty securing a job and was unsatisfied with his current life situation, the court said, but his actions endangered people' lives and met the criteria of attempted murder, according to the judges.

The court found Lin guilty and sentenced him to a prison term of five years and eight months. The ruling can be appealed.