Ambulance crew and police officers are seen outside 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. Some earlier reports mentioned that at least 15 people were killed and four were in “cardiac arrest”. The attacker said he would enter two homes for disabled people when there is few staff on duty before restraining the employees and killing patients with physical and mental impairments and handing himself over to police. As of April, 149 mentally impaired people ages 19 to 75 were staying at the facility.
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At about 3 a.m., he surrendered himself to the local Tsukui Police Station after driving there by auto. Photographers and video journalists swarmed the van as it pulled away. They said he turned himself in half an hour later.
The 26-year-old had been hospitalised earlier this year after delivering a letter to parliament in which he threatened to kill hundreds of the disabled.
Japan has one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the developed world and the mass killing is believed to be the nation’s worst since 1938, when a man armed with an axe, sword and rifle went on a rampage that left 30 people dead.
Fire department spokesmen told AFP that the dead were nine men and 10 women aged from 18 to 70, and another 25 people were wounded, 20 of them seriously. Police received another call at around 2:45 a.m., which said, “A man broke into our facility”.
According to the Kanagawa prefectural government, the facility was opened by the prefectural government in 1964.
Shinya Sakuma, head of prefectural health and welfare division, said Uematsu had worked at the facility until February. “That’s why he was able to kill so many”, Mizoguchi said. It demanded that all disabled people be put to death through “a world that allows for mercy killing”, Kyodo news agency and TBS TV reported.
The statement by National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said “there is never any excuse for such violence, but the fact that this attack occurred at a facility for persons with disabilities makes it all the more repugnant and senseless”. He also asked he be judged innocent on grounds of insanity, be given 500 million yen ($5 million) in aid and plastic surgery so he could lead a normal life afterward.
The letter was delivered before Uematsu’s last day of work at the facility, but it was unclear whether the letter played a role in his firing, or even if his superiors had known about it.
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Private broadcaster NTV reported that Uematsu told police he had been fired from his job, though officials said only that he left the position.
