Japan knife attack leaves 19 dead
PREVENTABLE: The killer had revealed his plan in a letter to Parliament
AJAPANESE man killed 19 people at a facility for the mentally disabled, where he had been fired, yesterday.
Officials said he had written a letter to Parliament, months ago, outlining the plan and saying all disabled people should be put to death.
Kanagawa prefectural authorities said Satoshi Uematsu, 26, took just 40 minutes to kill or injure nearly a third of the almost 150 patients. It is Japan’s deadliest mass killing in decades.
The Fire Department said he killed 10 women and nine men. The youngest was 19, the oldest 70. He wounded 25, 20 of them seriously.
Security camera footage showed a man driving up in a black car and carrying several knives to the Tsukui Yamayuri-en residential care facility here, 50km west of Tokyo. The man broke in by shattering a window at 2.10am and then set about slashing the patients’ throats.
The suspect turned himself in two hours after the attack, police said. Uematsu had worked at the facility from 2012 until February, when he was let go.
He had wanted to be a teacher. In two group photos posted on his Facebook page, he looks happy, smiling widely with other young men.
“It was so much fun today. Thank you, all. Now I am 23, but please be friends forever,” a 2013 post says.
But, somewhere along the way, things went terribly awry. In February, he hand-delivered a letter to the Parliament lower house speaker demanding that disabled people be put to death through “a world that allows for mercy killing”, Kyodo news agency and TBS TV reported.
Uematsu boasted in the letter that he could kill 470 disabled people in “a revolution”, and outlined an attack on two facilities, after which he said he would turn himself in.
He also asked to be judged innocent on grounds of insanity, be given ¥500 million (RM19.5 million) in aid and plastic surgery so that he could lead a normal life afterward.
“My reasoning is that I may be able to revitalise the world economy and I think it may be possible to prevent World War 3,” Uematsu added.
Kanagawa Governor Yuji Kuroiwa apologised for having failed to act on the warning signs. AP
Page 1 pic: Ambulance crew and firefighters outside the Tsukui Yamayuri-en facility in Kanagawa prefecture, where a number of people were killed and dozens injured by a man armed with a knife yesterday. AP pic