MAN DRESSED AS JOKER INJURES 17 IN ATTACK ON TOKYO TRAIN
▶ Suspect is in custody after stabbings and fire force passengers to flee through windows
A man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after 17 people were injured during a knife attack on a commuter train in Tokyo.
Police said the suspect also started a fire on the train, causing passengers to jump from windows to escape.
The fire department in the Japanese capital said three passengers suffered serious injuries in the attack on Sunday.
Police have identified the suspect as Kyota Hattori, 24. He was dressed as the Joker from the Batman franchise.
“I thought it was a Halloween stunt,” a witness told the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.
“Then, I saw a man walking this way, slowly waving a long knife.”
The attack began when the man, riding an express train to Shinjuku station, took out a knife and stabbed a seated passenger – a man in his seventies – in the chest, police said.
He told police he used a previous train stabbing as an example of how to carry out the attack.
Tokyo police officials said the incident happened inside the Keio train near Kokuryo station, western Tokyo.
Television footage showed firefighters, police and paramedics rescuing passengers, with many fleeing through the train’s windows.
In one video shown by national broadcaster NHK, passengers are seen running from carriage where the attacker set a fire.
After the man stabbed passengers, he poured a liquid resembling oil and set fire to it, NHK reported.
Shunsuke Kimura, who filmed the video, told NHK that he saw passengers running through the train and, while he was trying to figure out what happened, he heard an explosion and saw smoke.
He jumped from a window on to the platform but fell and injured his shoulder.
“Train doors were closed and we had no idea what was happening, and we jumped from the windows. It was horrifying,” Mr Kimura said.
It was the second knife attack on a Tokyo train in two months.
In August, the day before the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, 10 passengers were stabbed on a commuter train.
The attacker told police he wanted to hurt women who looked happy.
There have been a series of high-profile fatal stabbings in Japan in recent years.
In 2019, a man carrying two knives attacked a group of schoolgirls waiting at a bus stop outside Tokyo.
He killed two people, including a schoolgirl, and wounded 17 before killing himself.
A year earlier, a man armed with a knife killed a passenger and wounded two others on a bullet train travelling from Tokyo to Osaka.
In 2016, a former employee at a care home near Tokyo killed 19 people at the centre and wounded more than 20 in a stabbing spree.