The Japan News by The Yomiuri Shimbun
Woman, 90, killed in incident thought linked to recent robberies
A90-year-old woman was found dead Jan. 19 in her house in Komae, Tokyo, in a suspected robbery-homicide. Police found data including the address of the victim, Kinuyo Oshio, on a smartphone seized in connection with a robbery case that took place in Chiba Prefecture earlier this month.
A spate of similar incidents have been reported in the Kanto region this year.
e Metropolitan Police Department suspects that the Komae case could be related to criminal activities carried out by a group.
According to police sources, on the night of Jan. 12, two men posing as customers entered a secondhand store in Oami-shirasato, Chiba Prefecture, assaulted the store’s manager, aged in his 70s, and le without taking anything.
e following day, the Chiba prefectural police arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of robbery resulting in bodily injury in connection with the incident. When police analyzed the man’s smartphone data, they found Oshio’s address.
Upon receiving this information from the prefectural police, the MPD dispatched o cers to Oshio’s house at around 5 p.m., Jan. 19, and found her lying in a basement hallway bleeding from the face with her wrists bound. e initial examination of her body recorded external face wounds and a broken le arm. e MPD has conducted a judicial autopsy to try to determine the cause of death.
When the police arrived, the front door was unlocked and drawers and shelves on the rst oor and the basement showed signs of having been ransacked.
Oshio lived with her son, his wife and two grandchildren; the family members were not at home during the daytime. A neighbor reported seeing Oshio walking in front of her house at around 10:30 a.m., and the MPD believes the incident happened sometime a er that.
Since the start of the year, there have been a total of seven robberies in Chiba, Ibaraki, Saitama, Kanagawa and Tochigi prefectures, in which several men broke into houses, tied up the residents and robbed them of money and goods. (Jan. 21)
2ND SMARTPHONE FOUND
Another smartphone has been discovered containing information connected to the robbery-homicide, e Yomiuri Shimbun has learned.
Information related to this crime was found on a smartphone that the MPD con scated on Saturday as part of its probe into a separate case of robbery and assault that happened in early December in the capital’s Nakano Ward.
Similar information connected with the Komae case had earlier been found on the smartphone of a 23-year-old Self-Defense Forces member who was arrested over a robbery resulting in bodily injury that took place on Jan. 12 in Oami-shirasato.
Police believe the information was shared among the perpetrators.
According to investigators, several men broke into a house in Kamitakada, Nakano Ward, on Dec. 5 last year. ey assaulted a man in his 40s who lived there and ed with about ¥30 million in cash. On Saturday, the MPD arrested Rikuto Nagata, a 21-year-old from Suemachi, Kanazawa, on suspicion of
robbery resulting in bodily injury in connection with the Nakano case.
Analysis of the smartphone seized from the rental car Nagata was using showed that on Jan. 18, the day before Oshio was murdered, the place name “Komae City” and information about the time of the crime were exchanged via social media messages.
A spate of seven robberies and the s targeting residences and stores in ve Kanto region prefectures took place between Jan. 9 and 14, including the Oami-shirasato case. Based on similarities in the methods used and the condition of the crime scenes, police suspect that the same group of thieves recruited the perpetrators via social media and committed the robberies in various locations. Another rental car has been conrmed to have been in the vicinity of the crime scene in Komae on the day before and the day of the incident. A er the crime was committed, the car was found abandoned in a coin-operated parking
lot several hundred meters away from the elderly woman’s house.
Police suspect that the robbers cased the house the day before, broke in and later ed in another vehicle.
e judicial autopsy put Oshio’s time of death at around noon on Jan. 19. She is believed to have died from multiple external wounds, the result of being beaten all over her body.
ere were multiple footprints inside the house, and the entire property was ransacked. e MPD is investigating whether any money or goods were taken. (Jan. 23)
RENTAL CAR LINKED TO HOMICIDE FOUND
Police have found the rental car that was seen driving near the Tokyo home of the 90-year-old victim of a suspected robbery-homicide on the day of the woman’s death, investigative sources said.
e car was located on Jan. 20, the day a er the murder of Oshio, in Tokyo’s Adachi Ward, and has been impounded, the sources said. It had been used by
Nagata, who was arrested Saturday in a robbery-assault case that took place in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward in December.
e MPD suspects that the same group was involved in both cases, and is investigating the role Nagata played in each.
According to investigators, two suspicious rental cars were recorded on security cameras in the area of the Komae home on both the day before and the day of the murder.
e vehicles are believed to have been rented out of rental car shops in Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture.
One of the cars was found a er the incident abandoned in a pay parking lot a few hundred meters to the east of the victim’s home.
e MPD suspects that the criminal group used the other car for their getaway. e second car was found on Jan. 20 in Adachi Ward and impounded.
Nagata was in the vicinity of the car when it was found. He was arrested on suspicion of robbery resulting in injury for his alleged involvement in a case in Kamitakada.
A smartphone seized from the second rental car contained social media messages sent before Oshio’s murder that included data such as the place name “Komae City.”
ere also was a message saying, “I will contact you if someone doesn’t show up.” Police suspect that such exchanges may have been made in the planning of the robbery.
Nagata admitted to using the rental car, but said that the phone was not his, police said.
MORE ARRESTS IN NAKANO CASE
On Tuesday, the MPD arrested two men thought to be involved in the Nakano case.
Arrested on charges of robbery resulting in injury and breaking-and-entering into a residence were Masaya Yamada, 22, of Kita Ward, Saitama, and Shoji Hasegawa, 26, of Koto Ward, Tokyo. (Jan. 25)
‘DARK’ PART-TIME JOBS
Masahiro Wano, a suspect in a robbery in Nakano Ward, Tokyo, told the MPD he had applied for a “dark” parttime job and that the people he met up with before the robbery did not know each other.
Wano, 34, an unemployed man of no fixed address, has been indicted for robbery resulting in bodily injury. (Jan. 26)