By Chou Min-hung and Hollie Younger / Staff reporter, with staff writer
Two pedestrians were killed last night by a driver in Taoyuan who was found to be under the influence of amphetamines, marking the latest in a spate of drug-driving incidents across the country.
At 8:26pm last night, the car spun out of control and hit two men waiting to cross the road, one in his 40s and the other in his 60s, the Taoyuan Police Department said.
The men had out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and were later pronounced dead, police said.
Photo: Chou Min-hung, Taipei Times
Officers on patrol had noticed the car driving erratically at 8:20pm at the intersection between Chunri Road and Chingkuo Road, they said.
They asked the driver, a 30-year-old man surnamed Chang (張), to pull over, but he instead attempted to flee and sped up, running red lights and swerving dangerously.
He then lost control of the vehicle while in an active police pursuit and hit the two men at the intersection of Chingkuo Road and Tianxiang 3rd Street, police said.
The car then crashed into a traffic light pole and an electrical transformer box, witnesses said.
The driver was taken to hospital unconscious and later pronounced dead.
He tested positive for amphetamines, while police found the drug and related paraphernalia inside the vehicle.
Chang was known to the Taoyuan City Government as a controlled drug user.
Police said the case had been referred to the Taoyuan District Prosecutors’ Office on suspicion of public endangerment, drug offenses and negligent homicide.
Police said in a statement that drug-impaired driving is like a “mobile bomb” that causes irreparable harm to innocent people, adding that they would show no leniency to drug offenses and drug-impaired driving.
They also vowed to trace the source of the drugs to identify suppliers and root out drug networks.
Additional reporting by CNA