Wound

(1)

There is a horizontal linear symmetric²¹grazing gunshot wound, along the President's abdomen. It is 11 cm long, 2 cm wide and 1-2 cm deep, located approximately 3 cm below the navel.

(2)

There is a visible burn mark along the rims of the wound, according to the testimony of all physicians who attended and treated President Chen on March 19, including the three physicians who traveled with the President on March 19 and the three physicians of the Chi-Mei hospital who treated the President.²²

(3)

Official records at the Tainan Medical Examiner's office show that there is a sewn-up wound on President Chen's abdomen, approximately 9 cm long.

Remark  (i) The depth of the abdominal wound and the presence of burn marks on the wound cannot be verified by examining the wound after the wound was cleaned and sewn together at Chi Mei Hospital and subsequently healed. Moreover, it is difficult to make any meaningful judgment from the few photographs of the wound released by the authority. Therefore one has to rely on testimony by the eyewitness, to be presented in the next section.

(ii) In all news conferences convened by the Taiwanese authority within the first 100 days of the incident, the depth of the wound was always described as being ``1-2 cm''. In the news reports after the incident, several physicains were quoted as saying that the depth of the wound was ``approximately 2 cm''. Later on, the official number became ``1.2 cm deep'', said to be based on the record of the Chi Mei Hospital.²³