Court upholds most verdicts in 2022 pre-election Tainan shooting case

Tainan, Nov. 27 (CNA) The Taiwan High Court's Tainan branch on Wednesday upheld seven out of eight sentences in a series of appeals relating to a submachine gun shooting during a local election campaign in Tainan in late 2022.

The only exception was the sentence of Lee Chi-han (李奇漢), which was overturned. Although Lee was found not guilty in the first trial, the second trial convicted him of aiding and abetting threats against others.

Lee, was sentenced to one year in prison on Wednesday, according to a news release from the court.

The defendant was found to have driven the gunman, Kung Hsiang-chih (孔祥志), an acquaintance, and after the shooting helped him change clothes, the court said.

The other verdicts remained unchanged from the first trial at the Tainan District Court in February, ranging from acquittals to sentences of up to 10 years.

Although prosecutors believed Wang Wen-tsung (王文宗), chairman of Ciji Temple in Tainan's Syuejia District, was the mastermind behind the shooting, the district court only found him guilty of harboring a wanted fugitive, for which he received a six month sentence, commuted to a fine.

The court said it handed down the lighter penalty due to prosecutor's providing insufficient evidence he planned the shooting.

Meanwhile, Hung Cheng-chun (洪政軍), a close associate of Wang, was found guilty of being directly involved in arranging the shooting and recruiting Kung as a triggerman, for which he received a sentence of 10 years.

On Nov. 10, 2022, Kung conducted two attacks targeting properties owned by former Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Central Executive Committee member Kuo Tsai-chin (郭再欽) and former independent Tainan City Councilor Hsieh Tsai-wang (謝財旺).

Kung first fired 58 shots at a business owned by Kuo, before shooting another 30 rounds at the campaign headquarters of Hsieh's daughter, Hsieh Shu-fan (謝舒凡), who was a DPP candidate for Tainan City Council on Nov. 26, 2022.

Neither location was occupied at the time of the shooting, which did not result in any injuries.

Hung and Kung fled to China's Fujian province in November 2022, before they were arrested by Chinese police on Jan. 18, 2023 and repatriated to Taiwan in February that year.