Taipei—Local police have identified a Singaporean couple as persons of interest in connection with the discovery of the body of a baby girl in a rubbish bin in Xindian, Taiwan. The body of the newborn girl was found in the early hours of Tuesday, February 26.
Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA) reports that a worker found the baby’s body wrapped in a plastic bag and placed in a kitchen waste bucket. The bucket had been brought by a garbage truck to Xindian from Taipei on February 26, according to the police in Xindian.
The worker, an employee of a recycling firm, opened the plastic bag containing the baby’s remains after the truck had made its delivery at the firm. He reported his discovery to the local police at once.
Upon reviewing hours of footage from surveillance cameras on the street when and where the rubbish was collected, the police came to the conclusion that the infant was most likely disposed of in central Taipei, specifically at Ximending.
Police claim that a male had placed the remains of the baby in a black plastic bag, which he then put into a kitchen waste container at approximately 3 o’clock on Tuesday morning.
People who had been interviewed in Ximending told the police that they had seen the man, and heard him speaking Mandarin in a foreign accent, added the police.
Authorities visited a hotel in the vicinity that is popular with South East Asian tourists and were able to identify a man who looked like the male from the street camera footage, but who had already left the hotel.
The suspect is allegedly in his 20s and had arrived at a hotel in Wanhua District in Taipei, accompanied by a woman. They checked out of the hotel on Tuesday afternoon.
The staff from the hotel told one media outlet that the female looked pregnant when she arrived, but that she looked as though her tummy had flattened by the time she checked out.
Police have examined the hotel room and have swabbed bloodstains and gathered other evidence in order to investigate the connection to the death of the infant.
They have been able to determine that the man and woman are Singaporeans who allegedly left Taiwan late on Tuesday.
Taiwan’s Criminal Investigation Bureau has reached out to their counterparts in Singapore in order to ask for help in finding the couple so they can identify and question them.
They could be charged with murder and abandonment in Taiwan.