Satoshi Uematsu exhibited disturbing behavior before Tuesday’s massacre at a care home, delivering an ominous euthanasia letter to House of Representatives Speaker Tadamori Oshima and telling co-workers and the police he meant to kill disabled people, prompting his forced hospitalization.
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Satoshi Uematsu, left, the suspect of Tuesday’s knife attack at a home for the mentally disabled, is escorted as he leaves a police station in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo to be sent to prosecutors Wednesday, July 27, . He also urged legal changes to allow the severely disabled to be euthanized, according to NHK, the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation, as The New York Times reported. But after just 12 days, doctors deemed him safe to release in March, Japanese authorities said.
The facility employs more than 200 people, including part-timers, with nine of them working the night of the attack, Hirosue said.
Kanagawa governor Yuji Kuroiwa apologised for having failed to act on the warning signs in the letter, where Uematsu included his full name, address and telephone number.
After attacking almost a third of the center’s residents at his leisure, Uetmatsu drove to the Sagamihara police station and confessed to one of the deadliest crimes to take place in Japan since World War II.
The attack happened about at 2:30 am local time on Tuesday morning at the facility for handicapped people in Sagamihara.
Details of the attack, including whether the victims were asleep or otherwise helpless, were not immediately known, however, all those killed were patients.
Police outside the residential facility in Kanagawa.
The facility, called the Tsukui Yamayuri-en, was home to about 150 adult residents who have mental disabilities, Japan’s Kyodo News service said.
Uematsu, who worked at the facility from 2012 until earlier this year, previously worked for a transportation company, and had trained to be a teacher.
Sagamihara fire department official Kunio Takano said the attacker killed 10 women and nine men.
The letter had raised concerns and Uematsu was committed to hospital on February 19 for nearly two weeks after local police contacted him. “The best parallel I can imagine is the war, when tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers preferred dying in hopeless circumstances rather than surrendering – because of the power of shame”.
Police had recovered a bag with several knives, at least one stained with blood, a Kanagawa prefecture official said.
The attack shocked neighbours, many of whom said they had a good relationship with both the staff and the residents of the home in the hilly, semi-rural community in Sagamihara.
“He was just an ordinary young fellow”, said Akihiro Hasegawa.
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It’s completely illegal to own a handgun in the country, and to get a shotgun or rifle is a longwinded process (even members of the notorious Yakuza gang rarely carry firearms.) In 2014, there were only six gun-related deaths in the entire country, and in 2015, there were only eight crimes in which guns were fired. Seven people died in 2008 when a man drove a truck into a crowd and began stabbing people in Tokyo’s popular electronics and “anime” district of Akihabara.
