Japan knife attacker grins before cameras
Print Edition
A JAPANESE man who admitted murdering 19 people at a center for the mentally disabled grinned at news cameras yesterday before being questioned about the country’s worst killing spree in decades.
Police searched the home of the 26-year-old, who reportedly said he wanted all disabled people to “disappear,” after the knife rampage that left his victims in pools of blood, including some who were stabbed in the neck.
With a blue jacket draped over his head, Satoshi Uematsu was escorted out of a police station into a waiting van before a crowd of flashing cameras. Inside the vehicle with the jacket removed, he smiled broadly in footage broadcast on morning news shows.
Uematsu’s self-styled mission to rid the country of the mentally disabled — laid out earlier this year in a long letter that came to light on Tuesday — has shocked Japan, as has the carnage at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en center in Sagamihara city outside Tokyo.
Questions were being asked about why he had been allowed to leave the hospital where he was admitted in February for mental evaluation following his threats.
In a sign that the care center feared its former employee, public broadcaster NHK said the facility in April set up 16 cameras to watch out for him after he was discharged from the hospital.
An official at the Tsukui police station where Uematsu was held after the attack declined to comment on the investigation.
Plainclothes police officers were seen searching his house where yellow tape declared it a no-entry zone. The two-story dwelling is in the same neighbourhood as the care center.
Local media claimed yesterday Uematsu has told police that he wants to apologize to bereaved families about the sudden loss of their loved ones, though he still justified what he did.
“I saved those with multiple disabilities,” he told police, according to private broadcaster TV Asahi which cited investigative sources.
Uematsu broke into the care center in the forested hills of Sagamihara in the early hours of Tuesday. He tied up two caregivers before stabbing residents using a total of five knives — leaving a total of 26 people injured, 13 of them severely.
He quickly turned himself in at a police station, carrying bloodied knives and admitting to officers: “I did it.” Uematsu reportedly also said: “The disabled should all disappear.”
Security camera footage taken near the center showed a vehicle arriving there shortly before the attack began. The driver opened the boot to remove objects before walking toward the facility.
Around 2:50am, shortly after an emergency call was made to police from the center, the footage shows the driver dashing back to the vehicle, carrying a large bag.
Uematsu left his job at the care home and was forcibly hospitalized in February after telling colleagues he intended to kill disabled people at the center.
But he was discharged 12 days later when a doctor deemed he was not a threat. He had previously delivered a letter to the speaker of the lower house of parliament in which he threatened to kill hundreds of disabled people, outlining a broad plan for night-time attacks against Tsukui Yamayuri-en and another facility.
In the rambling letter he presented a vision of a society in which the seriously handicapped could be euthanized with the approval of family members since “handicapped people only create unhappiness.”
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
