At least 25 other residents of the facility were wounded during the attack, 20 of them seriously.
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New details uncovered about the man who killed 19 people with disabilities in Japan revealed the 26-year-old purposely sought to “kill severely disabled people”.
He was arrested after he turned himself in at a police station.
Yuji Kuroiwa, the governor of Kanagawa prefecture where the facility is located, said he had been told that Uematsu had suddenly changed before he was encouraged to voluntarily resign in February.
“I am fully aware this is a statement that defies common sense”, he said in letters addressed to the speaker of parliament’s lower house, a copy of which was obtained by Kyodo news agency.
Tuesday’s attack marks the worst mass killing in Japan since 2001 when 16 people died in an arson attack at a video parlour in Osaka.
A Twitter account carrying Uematsu’s name and which domestic media said was used by the suspect indicated he was a fun-loving young man who enjoyed karaoke and beach parties and wanted to quit smoking.
Sagamihara fire department official Kunio Takano said the attacker killed 10 women and nine men.
Satoshi Uematsu (Centre, with a jacket over his head), suspected of a deadly attack at a facility for the disabled, is escorted by police officers as he is taken from local jail to prosecutors, at Tsukui police station in Sagamihara, Kanagawa prefecture, Japan. He began working at the Tsukui Yamayuriefacility in 2012, but had not been employed there since February.
Three people appearing to be a family showed up to lay flowers, but they were unable to do so, as police prevented them from coming close to the property.
Japan has one of the lowest crime rates in the world and residents of Sagamihara said they were in shock.
The Sagamihara City fire department says that 19 people were confirmed dead in the attack.
“It’s unthinkable that something like this could happen not just in Japan but, here in our community”, said Mitsuo Kishi, a 76-year-old who lives a few hundred yards from Uematsu’s house. In more recent years, they didn’t talk as much but Uematsu, who Kishi said had graduated from teacher training college, always slowed down to say hello as he drove past.
The killer himself was hospitalised in a mental hospital in February 2016 as city officials deemed him unstable but was released later in March as his health was considered to have improved. Many note that mass killings are rare in Japan in part because guns are not easily available.
A revision to Japan’s Swords and Firearms Control Law was introduced in 2009 in the wake of that attack, banning the possession of double-edged knives and further tightening gun-ownership rules.
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Members of a doomsday cult killed 12 people and made thousands ill in 1995 in simultaneous attacks with sarin nerve gas on five Tokyo rush-hour subway trains.
