What these incidents have in common (and indeed, what they have in common with many mass killings around the world) is a disaffected and often mentally destabilized man, warning signs either overlooked or dismissed, and in the end a barbaric crime.
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Kanagawa prefecture officials said that the murders took place at 2 a.m. Tuesday morning when Satoshi Uematsu, a former employee at the facility, broke in through a window and went on a stabbing spree going from room to room.
In February, Uematsu was also tested positive for marijuana consumption.
The Japan Times reported that some residents and staff may have been tied up during the attack.
June 8, 2008: Seven people are killed by a man who slams a truck into a crowd in central Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district and then get out and starts stabbing people.
Hospital staff talking to the media said the death toll was likely to rise as many of those injured sustained life threatening injuries.
Authorities quoted a bloodied Uematsu as saying I did it upon his arrival at Tsukui Police Station, where he had driven himself after the attack at the residential home that took care of people aged between 19 and 75 years old with mental disabilities, to hand himself over to the police. “I did it”, he told police.
In the letter, Uematsu demanded “a world where [people with disabilities] can be euthanized”, and said he would “kill 470 people with disabilities”, sources said.
Japan is one of the most peaceful countries in the world, according to the Institute for Economics and Peace, a think tank. Nineteen patients were killed, and two of the 26 people injured also were residents at the facility, which had 157 mentally disabled residents.
The attack has left this rural area in shock, but was apparently not entirely without warning.
Yasuyuki Deguchi, a criminologist, said Uematsu’s alleged actions were typical of someone who bears a grudge and seeks revenge, because it appeared he planned out the attack, and then he turned himself in to police.
“These people were severely disabled, and they were asleep. He went in the dark of the night, opened one door at a time, and stabbed sleeping people one by one”.
Alleged killer Satoshi Uematsu was a former employee of the facility, and although reasons of his departure are still murky, speculations have arisen that he quit abruptly in February after being chastised about abusive remarks aimed at residents.
He had been working there since 2012, Motoko Rich, the New York Times’ Tokyo bureau chief, told CNN. “My daughter knew the culprit, I mean, they were acquainted”. It’s the worst massacre in post-war Japan. “I still can’t understand why it happened here”.
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Uematsu lived near the facility, and a neighbour described him as a polite, young man who always greeted him with a smile. But they have ruled out terrorism as the cause.
