Letter warned Japan parliament of rampage
Former worker at care home gave politicians his outline of plan to kill disabled people
SAGAMIHARA, JAPAN— A young Japanese man went on a stabbing rampage Tuesday at a facility for the mentally disabled where he had been fired, officials said, killing 19 people months after he gave a letter to parliament outlining the bloody plan and saying all disabled people should be put to death.
When he was done, Kanagawa prefectural authorities said 26-year-old Satoshi Uematsu had left dead or injured nearly a third of the almost 150 patients at the facility in a matter of 40 minutes in the early Tuesday attack. It is Japan’s deadliest mass killing in decades. The fire department said 25 were wounded, 20 of them seriously.
Security camera footage played on TV news programs showed a man driving up in a black car and carrying several knives to the Tsukui Yamayuri-en facility in Sagamihara, 50 kilometres west of Tokyo. The man broke in by shattering a window at 2:10 a.m., according to a prefectural health official, and then set about slashing the patients’ throats.
Sagamihara fire department official Kunio Takano said the attacker killed 10 women and nine men. The youngest was 19, the oldest 70.
Details of the attack, including whether the victims were asleep or otherwise helpless, were not immediately known. Kanagawa prefecture welfare division official Tatsuhisa Hirosue said many details weren’t clear because those who might know were still being questioned by police.
The suspect calmly turned himself in about two hours after the attack, police said.
Uematsu had worked at Tsukui Yamayuri-en from 2012 until February, when he was let go. He knew the staffing would be down to just a handful in the wee hours of the morning, Japanese media reports said.
Not much is known yet about his background, but Uematsu once dreamed of becoming a teacher. But somewhere along the way, things went terribly awry.
In February, Uematsu tried to hand deliver a letter to parliament’s lower house speaker that revealed his dark turmoil. It demanded that all disabled people be put to death through “a world that allows for mercy killing,” Kyodo news agency and TBS TV reported. The parliament office also confirmed the letter.
Uematsu boasted in the letter that he had the ability to kill 470 disabled people in what he called “a revolution,” and outlined an attack on two facilities, after which he said he would turn himself in. He also asked that he be judged innocent on grounds of insanity and that he be given 500 million yen ($6.3 million) in aid and plastic surgery so he could lead a normal life afterward.
“My reasoning is that I may be able to revitalize the world economy and I thought it may be possible to prevent World War III,” the letter says.
The letter included Uematsu’s name, address and telephone number, and reports of his threats were relayed to local police where Uematsu lived, Kyodo said.
Kanagawa Gov. Yuji Kuroiwa apologized for having failed to act on the warning signs.
Some people in the area said they were shocked that Uematsu is accused, and described him as polite and upstanding.