KNIFEMAN WANTED DISABLED PEOPLE ‘EUTHANIZED’
SAGAMIHARA The man who went on a rampage in a care home Tuesday morning, killing 19 and gravely injuring 20 others in the worst mass-killing in Japan’s postwar history, reportedly said that disabled people should be “euthanized” in a letter sent to Parliament months earlier outlining his plan.
The nightmare began shortly after 2 a.m. local time Tuesday when the suspect, a 26-year-old named Satoshi Uematsu, used a hammer to break a window at the care home. Uematsu had worked there as an administrator until February this year.
He reportedly tied up the eight staff members who were on duty at that time and then went on a rampage, stabbing 45 patients as they lay in their beds.
In February, Uematsu took a letter to the speaker of the House of Representatives in which he threatened to carry out the attack.
“I will carry out a massacre without harming the staff,” Uematsu wrote in the letter. “I will kill 470 disabled people. My goal is to euthanize, with their guardians’ consent, seriously disabled people if they can’t live at home or be active in society,” he wrote, referring to the centre by name. “I will carry it out at night time, when there are fewer staff on duty,” he wrote.