Bank Employee Shot Dead in Armed Robbery: Suspect Commits Suicide
A man in Hsinchu City shot a bank employee dead during an armed robbery this afternoon, November 24. After being surrounded by police in a nearby building, the suspect then hung himself.
At around 2:00pm, the suspect Pan Jian-yuan (潘健源) entered a branch of Taiwan Cooperative Bank in Dongmen Street holding a pistol. The suspect fired four shots, one of which hit a 50 year-old bank employee in the chest. The robber then fled the bank with NT$730,000. The seriously injured bank teller was rushed to hospital but was shortly after declared dead.
When Pan exited the bank, he ran into a police officer who had arrived to deal with Pan’s illegally parked van. Pan shot at the officer and fled on foot. Pan then entered a residential building near by.
According to TVBS, heavily armed tactical response police surrounded the building. More than one hundred police officers were called to the scene to secure all escape routes.
Pan fired one shot during the confrontation, but after realizing he could not escape, Pan, 39, hung himself from a security gate on the second floor of the building using a power lead from a floor cleaning machine.
Paramedics attempted to resuscitate Pan, but to no avail.
Pan, who resided in Taichung, had been released from prison on parole in 2014 after serving time for previous armed robbery cases, and his parole period had ended in April this year. He also had previous convictions for drug trafficking and other offences.
The deceased bank teller was Lai Wei-da (賴偉達), a single father of a 16 year-old girl. He was the breadwinner for a family that included his parents, both in their 80s. Police Commissioner Chen Chia-chin (陳家欽) went to a funeral home in Hsinchu this evening to offer his condolences to the family.
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