Stabbing rampage kills 19 in Japan
Suspect once worked at home for the disabled
A man with a knife killed at least 19 people and wounded two dozen more at a facility for the disabled in a Tokyo suburb before turning himself in to police.
TOKYO — Nineteen people were stabbed to death at a care home for people with disabilities, Japanese media reported Tuesday, describing the worst mass-casualty attack in the postwar era in Japan.
A knife-wielding man apparently aggrieved at having been fired from the facility in Sagamihara, west of Tokyo, went on the rampage at 2:30 a.m. local time. He killed 19 people and injured 26 more, a dozen seriously. They have been transported to nearby hospitals for treatment. NHK, the public broadcaster, aired footage of ambulances lined up outside the facility.
The suspect, a 26-yearold whose name was given as Satoshi Uematsu, then drove himself to the police station to turn himself in. He was immediately arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and unlawful entry to a building.
“I did it,” he told police, explaining that he was angry at losing his job at the facility, according to local TV reports. “It’s better that disabled people disappear,” the police quoted him as saying, according to local reports.
The stabbing took place in the Tsukui Yamayuri-en facility in the Midori part of Sagamihara, about 35 miles west of Tokyo. The facility was built by the prefectural authorities and is run by a social welfare service organization called Kanagawa Kyodokai. The people who live there have a wide range of physical disabilities. Some are bedridden.
Some 149 people between ages 18 and 75 live at the facility, NHK reported. All are intellectually disabled, but some also have physical disabilities and mental disorders.
Uematsu allegedly used a hammer to break a window and get into the facility, Nippon TV reported. He started stabbing residents but was apprehended by a staff member, apparently tying up the person and snatching his keys before going on to stab more people, Nippon TV reported. NHK said a hammer was found and a window was broken at the facility and a knife in his car outside the police station.
Such bloodshed is highly unusual in Japan, which had one gun death last year, and the attack was shaping up to be the worst single-perpetrator mass murder in modern Japanese history.
But there have been occasional high-profile stabbing incidents, including one in 2008 in the Tokyo neighborhood of Akihabara in which seven people were killed after a man in a truck plowed into a crowd of shoppers, then stabbed several bystanders.
The death toll in Tuesday’s rampage was higher than in the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, carried out by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, in which 12 people were killed and 50 severely injured.