By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
Former vice president Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) yesterday said she has found new evidence suggesting that the “319 shooting” incident was committed by at least three people and urged authorities to reopen the case for investigation, a day before the 10th anniversary of the controversial incident.
The 319 shooting incident was an attack on Lu and then-president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) in Tainan on March 19, 2004, one day before the presidential election. A bullet grazed Chen’s stomach and left a 13cm wound, while another bullet hit Lu in the knee.
Lu told a press conference in the Legislative Yuan that a “secret witness” said he had overheard a conversation between Chen Yi-hsiung (陳義雄), who was later identified by authorities as the shooter and found dead 10 days after the shooting, and two men at a park on Jinhua Road near where the shooting took place.
The witness quoted Chen Yi-hsiung as saying: “I’m going to let him die today,” Lu said.
The two men asked Chen Yi-hsiung to stop talking and they left, Lu quoted the witness as saying. The shooting took place not long after the conversation ended.
The witness, a Greater Tainan resident aged about 60, said he did not think Chen Yi-hsiung was the shooter because he went to the side of the road opposite to where the shots were fired, Lu added.
“I urge the new prosecutor-general and the Special Investigation Division of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office to relaunch an investigation into the case,” Lu said.
According to the witness’ account, the location of the “hot zone” — the area from which the shots were fired — was at least 200m from the hot zone identified by US-based forensic scientist Henry Lee (李昌鈺), said Yang Hsien-hung (楊憲宏), Lu’s adviser.
Yang said he had spent more than an hour rebuilding the crime scene with the secret witness, who provided his account of the incident in August last year, but declined to attend the press conference because he feared for his safety.
The witness had identified one of the two alleged accomplices, Yang said.
The witness was a supporter of Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Hsu Tain-tsair (許添財), who was the mayor of Tainan at the time of the shooting, and met Lu in Greater Kaohsiung last year, Yang said.