19 people have been killed and about 20 wounded in a knife attack at a centre for disabled people near Tokyo – Japan’s worst mass killing in generations.
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Police said they responded to a call at about 2.30am local time on Tuesday from an employee saying something terrible was happening at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en (Tsukui Lily Garden) centre in the city of Sagamihara, just west of the capital.
An ambulance moves past in front of a facility for the handicapped where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo.
The Tsukui Lily Garden facility for the disabled in Kanagawa Prefecture housed a total of 149 people aged between 19 and 75.
The truth was shocking: A deadly knife attack that left 19 dead at the facility for disabled, made all the more painful because the home was an active member of the community whose residents and staff were generally well-liked.
Police said they received a call from the centre around 2:30am (1730 GMT Monday), raising the alarm that a man armed with a knife had entered the facility.
Kanagawa prefecture welfare official Susumu Yamazaki says the residents who were not hurt had to vacate their usual living quarters while police investigated the attack Tuesday. Police officers outside the station would not confirm that it was his vehicle. He had three knives with him, at least one covered in blood, and tie cables in his vehicle. He was immediately arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and unlawful entry to a building.
Uematsu was committed to hospital after he expressed a “willingness to kill severely disabled people”, an official in Sagamihara told Reuters.
Satoshi Uematsu, a 26-year-old former employee at the facility, turned himself in to police over the early morning attack, reportedly saying: “The disabled should all disappear”.
Kanagawa Gov. Yuji Kuroiwa apologized for having failed to act on the warning signs.
The attack was the biggest massacre in Japan since the end of World War II, and it has shocked the population.
“I was surprised to hear that the culprit was a person from this neighborhood”, she said.
Japanese broadcaster NTV reported that Uematsu was upset because he had been fired, but that could not be independently confirmed.
The facility, called the Tsukui Yamayuri-en, is home to about 150 adult residents who have mental disabilities, Japan’s Kyodo News service said.
In 1995, members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult carried out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 people. In 2008, a man rammed a truck into pedestrians in the popular Akihabara electronics district, then began stabbing people with a knife; seven people died in that incident.
In 2001, a knife-wielding man killed eight students in an elementary school in Ikeda in Osaka Prefecture.
A US government statement issued by the White House expressed shock at the “heinous attack” and offered condolences to the families of those killed in the knife attack at a facility for the handicapped in Japan.
According to the Hachioji Medical Center of Tokyo Medical University, which admitted four of the injured, all four have stab wounds to the upper half of their bodies, particularly around their necks, and are unconscious.
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“This is a peaceful, quiet town so I never thought such an incident would happen here”, said Oshikazu Shimo, one of many residents of the town who gathered near the facility. “Thank you, all. Now I am 23, but please be friends forever”, a 2013 post says.
