Knife rampage hits facility for disabled

DISABLED FACILITY

• At least 19 people have been stabbed to death and 20 injured in a knife attack Tuesday at a facility for the handicapped in Sagamihara, just outside Tokyo.

Police said they responded to a call about 2:30 a.m. from an employee saying something horrible was happening. A knife-wielding man apparently went on a rampage at the facility, reports said.

A 26-year-old man identified as Satoshi Uematsu turned himself in at a police station about two hours later, officials in Sagamihara said.

He allegedly left a knife in his car when he entered the station.

He has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and trespassing.

Police said there were several casualties but did not provide any numbers.

Japan’s national broadcaster NHK said the suspect was a former employee at the facility, Tsukui Yamayurien.

“I did it,” the man told police when charged with murder, NHK reported.

Television footage showed a number of ambulances parked outside the facility, with medics and other rescue workers running in and out.

Among the injured, at least 13 people were in critical condition and were taken to hospitals in Kanagawa prefecture and in Tokyo, the media reports said.

The attack was among the worst single-perpetrator mass murders in modern Japanese history.

There was no immediate information about the motive for the attack, although the suspect had told the police that he wanted the disabled people “to disappear,” the Asahi newspaper reported.

The Tsukui Yamayuri En facility is in the Midori part of Sagamihara, about 60 kilometres west of Tokyo. The facility was built by the prefectural authorities and is run by a social welfare service organization called Kanagawa Kyodokai.

The people who live there have a wide range of physical disabilities. Some can walk and do outside activities while others are bedridden.

The facility provides both residential accommodation and day care and has a swimming pool, gym and medical clinic.

Such bloodshed is highly unusual in Japan, which had one gun death last year.

Just eight crimes were committed in 2015 that involved gunfire, according to police.

But there have been occasional high-profile stabbing incidents, including one in 2008 in the city of Akihabara in which seven people were killed after a man in a truck plowed into a crowd of shoppers, then stabbed several bystanders.

The death toll in Tuesday’s rampage was higher than in the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, carried out by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, in which 12 people were killed and 50 severely injured.