Updates About The S’porean Couple Abandoning Their Newborn Baby in Taiwan Saga

Sarah Lim

2019-03-05 , 8:00 pm

The dustbin at work is sometimes overflowing. With waste paper, food wrappers and so on.

I’m sure yours sometimes is too. #guilty

But what I know for sure is that neither of our bins has a baby in it.

Yep, a baby.

But who would throw a baby into a dustbin?

Well, this couple did. And it was their own baby, at that.

Here’s What You Need to Know

If you haven’t yet heard, the body of a newborn baby girl was found in a black plastic bag at a recycling plant in New Taipei early morning on Tuesday, 26 Feb 2019.

The bag had been carried by a garbage truck travelling from Taipei to Xindian.

It was discovered by an employee of the recycling plant as he was sorting through the trash.

The Culprits

The body has been traced back to a Singaporean couple, a 24-year-old woman and her 23-year-old boyfriend.

The couple flew into Taiwan on 19 February and departed on 26 February.

Investigators managed to trace the black plastic back to central Taipei’s Ximending district, where the baby was originally dumped into a kitchen waste bin.

The newborn baby girl was found with both her placenta and umbilical cord still attached.

Backtracking The Entire Route

The police reviewed CCTV footage along the route the garbage truck took and saw a man in his 20s throwing the black garbage bag into a kitchen waste container around 3 am on Tuesday, February 26.

When members of the public who had spoken with the man were asked, they said that he spoke Mandarin with a foreign accent.

The couple was also said to have checked in to a hotel that was popular amongst Southeast Asian visitors to Taiwan.

The Taiwanese officials are working together with Singapore authorities on the matter.

When the couple was questioned, they denied the crime.

The girl insisted that if she was pregnant, she would not have been able to board the flight.

The man’s parents said that they knew that their son and his girlfriend had gone to Taiwan for a holiday, but they were unaware that she was pregnant. They said that if their son were indeed responsible for what had happened, they expected him to bear the consequences.

The Singaporean couple is now back in Singapore.

The Straits Times tried contacting the man in his home in Yishun and the girl in hers at Choa Chu Kang but they did not respond.

Latest Updates

The Taiwanese police took samples of bloodstains from the Taipei hotel room the couple allegedly stayed in.

On Monday, 4 March 2019, they confirmed that the DNA from the bloodstains matched that of the newborn baby girl.

What Happens Now?

Now that the DNA is confirmed to be “a match”, the Taiwanese authorities are working to determine if the baby died before or after birth.

If the baby died before birth, the suspects could be charged with abandoning a corpse.

If she died after birth, the suspects could be charged with negligent homicide and abandoning a corpse.

Singaporeans’ Response

Singaporeans understandably responded with much rage and upset.

While they shared pity and well-wishes for the dead baby, they also raged against the irresponsible parents, saying that they should have handled the situation better.

No Extradition Treaty With Taiwan

It was made clear that Singapore do not have any extradition treaty with Taiwan.

However, it doesn’t mean that the couple gets off scot-free.

The Singapore police force can request for the couple’s bloodwork, DNA samples and information for the investigation.

And if they’re guilty? They can still be charged in Singapore.