Parking violations lead to explosive charges

Taoyuan City police on a routine patrol discovered a cache of handmade grenades in a car driven by a man who had parked illegally, this morning, November 3, and it was one of two similar, but unrelated cases in the city today.

According to police who spoke at a media briefing today, officers noticed an illegally parked car on Nanfeng Street, Taoyuan District at around 1:00 am.

Police approached the 21-year-old driver, named Chen, with the intention of issuing a warning, and asking him to move the vehicle. However, Chen appeared extremely nervous, thereby arousing the officers’ suspicions.

Police searched the vehicle and uncovered a quantity of heroin, amphetamines, rainbow cigarettes, 10 homemade hand grenades, an airgun, and a machete.

After taking Chen in for questioning, police handed him over to the District Prosecutor’s Office to be charged for drugs and illegal weapons offenses.

Police said that the homemade explosives had been manufactured using high-altitude fireworks. Chen had argued that the grenades were just to be used for fun as firecrackers on camping trips.

Around an hour after Chen’s arrest, and also in Taoyuan City, police officers investigating an illegally parked car in An Dong Street arrested a 32-year-old man named Sun after they found a quantity of amphetamines and 47 rounds of pistol ammunition in the vehicle.

According to a preliminary investigation, the two cases are not believed to be related, police said.

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