Japan knife attack: 19 killed and dozens wounded in stabbing
LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/25/tokyo-knife-attack-stabbing-sagamihara
At least 19 people are reported to have been killed and another 26 injured after a man went on a rampage with a knife at a Japanese facility for disabled people in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
Japan’s public broadcaster NHK said a suspect had been arrested after he attacked residents of the Tsukui Yamayuri En (Tsukui Lily Garden) facility in Sagamihara in Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo.
Japanese media reported that staff at the facility called police at 2.30am local time with reports of a man armed with a knife on the grounds.
When authorities arrived they confirmed at least 15 people had died with four more people in cardiac arrest according to media reports. Japan’s Kyodo news agency has put the death toll at 19 which if confirmed would be one of the worst crimes in Japanese postwar history.
The dozens of wounded were taken to at least six hospitals in the western Tokyo area. Emergency workers said many of the injured people were in a serious condition.
Twenty-nine emergency squads responded to the attack, Kyodo reported.
A man identified as the father of a patient in the facility told NHK he learned about the attack on the radio and had received no information from the centre.
“I’m very worried but they won’t let me in,” he said, standing just outside a cordon of yellow crime-scene tape.
According to police in Sagamihara a man turned himself in at a police station about two hours after the attack.
He left a knife in his car when he entered the station. He has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and trespassing.
Police said they are investigating the motive behind the mass attack.
“We are still confirming details of the case,” a police spokesman said.
Local media said a 26-year-old former employee of the facility, had admitted carrying out the attack.
TV footage taken from a helicopter over the scene showed a long line of ambulances parked outside the two-storey facility.
It appeared that emergency workers were removing the dead and treating the injured beneath a large orange tarpaulin screen.
A resident of the area, located in a mountain valley south of Mount Takao, told NHK that police had arrested a man with blond hair dressed in black clothes.
The Tsukui Yamayuri-En facility is situated in 3-hectares (7.6 acres) of grounds. Established by the local government and nestled on the wooded bank of the Sagami River, it cares for people with a wide range of disabilities,
The facility has a swimming pool, gym and medical clinic, according to Kyodo News.
Mass killing are relatively rare in Japan, which has extremely strict gun-control laws. In 2008, seven people were killed by a man who slammed a truck into a crowd of people in central Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district and then stabbed passers-by.
Fourteen were injured in 2010 by an unemployed man who stabbed and beat up passengers on two public buses outside a Japanese train station in Ibaraki Prefecture, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.
