By Chris Wang / Staff reporter
A mother and son yesterday filed a lawsuit against Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Alex Tsai (蔡正元) in Taipei for destruction of property while two lawyers accused him of attempted murder — all stemming from an car accident triggered by a protest outside the Legislative Yuan.
Lin Shu-yen (林淑燕) and her son, Chu Yu-hsuan (朱育玄), filed a lawsuit at Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office, accusing Tsai of ramming his car into Lin’s vehicle on Friday last week and fleeing the scene.
Speaking at a press conference before filing the lawsuit, Lin said she started chasing Tsai’s vehicle after seeing it run a red light on Zhongxiao E Road with two people clinging to the hood of the car.
“My instinct was to try to save [the two],” she said. “I did not know Tsai was in the car and I was only trying to do the right thing.”
Lin said she was able to pull ahead and stop Tsai’s car, but Tsai asked his driver to keep driving. Chu said he knocked on a window of Tsai’s car with an umbrella because he was afraid that his mother would be hit.
At the time Tsai’s car had traveled more than 1.2km — with two people clinging to the hood — from the Legislative Yuan, where demonstrators had tried to stop Tsai from leaving, as they did with other legislators in a protest against the lawmakers’ failure to enact antinuclear legislation, lawyer Chan Shun-kuei (詹順貴) said.
Video recordings taken from the event data recorder in Lin’s car and the media will be submitted as evidence, Chan said.
On Friday last week Tsai held a press conference to give his version of events and filed lawsuits against the two protesters, Lin and Chu for destruction of property, coercion and public safety offenses.
He said he had not caused a traffic accident or committed a hit-and-run. He also described the two protesters as “rioters.”
However, Tsai had used his position and familiarity with the media to distort the event, Chan said, adding that Ministry of Justice chief prosecutor Chen Shu-yun (陳淑雲) had violated the principle of administrative neutrality by attending a press conference organized by Tsai on the day of the incident.
Chan said he would file an attempted murder charge against Tsai because the protesters on his car could have been killed.
If prosecutors decide not to press charges against Lin and Chu, Chan said he would file a suit against Tsai for malicious slander.
Tsai yesterday said he had no comment about the lawsuits.