Map showing the location of the Deadly knife attack in Japan.
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Uematsu going on the rampage, as a result, 19 people were killed and 26 got injuries, said police.
The attacker entered the Tsukui Yamayuri Garden facility at around 02.30 am (local time) and started stabbing people indiscriminately.
Private broadcaster NTV reported that Uematsu told police he had been fired from his job, though officials said only that he left the position. At least one media report said Uematsu had called for euthanasia of the severely disabled.
A man later went into a police station and said: “I did it”, according to local media.
Uematsu was said to use a hammer to break the window, Nippon TV reported.
He turned himself into police shortly after the attack.
The suspect apparently began changing about five months ago, said Yuji Kuroiwa, the governor of Kanagawa prefecture, where the facility is located.
Investigators have not confirmed the motive of the attack yet. He was forced to resign after “several disturbing episodes”, including an incident where he threatened to kill hundreds of disabled people “for the sake of Japan”, according to the New York Times.
Another report put the number of injured as high as 45. He further wrote that many of them had no contact with their family members. On Feb. 19, Uematsu was committed to a psychiatric facility.
“I was surprised to hear that the culprit was a person from this neighbourhood”, she said. Since April 2005, it has been run by social welfare association Kanagawa Kyodo-kai. Surrounded by tree-covered mountains and on the banks of the Sagami River, it cares for people with a wide range of disabilities. Some can walk and do outside activities, while others are bedridden.
It had 149 residents between the ages of 19 to 75 as of the end of June, according to Kanagawa officials. Uematsu worked at the center-which is a residential care center for adults with mental and physical disabilities-from December 2012 until February 2016. Gun ownership is very strictly controlled and enforced in Japan, where mass killings are an extremely rare phenomenon.
In 1995, 13 people were killed and more than 6,000 injured in the sarin gas attack staged by the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, the worst-ever act of domestic terrorism on Japanese soil.
A fleet of ambulances, police cars and fire trucks converged on the one-storey Tsukui Yamayuri-en centre, a low-rise building nestled against forested hills, which was cordoned off and draped with yellow “Keep Out” tape.
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The ramblings brought him to the attention of Tokyo police, who informed Sagamihara authorities that he was a potential threat, a city official told AFP. Nineteen disabled people were slaughtered in their sleep during a killing spree at a Japanese group home for the disabled.
