The stabbing rampage early Tuesday at a facility for disabled peopled outside of Tokyo has stunned Japan, and not just because it is the deadliest mass murder in the country since World War II.
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Nineteen patients were killed, and two of the 26 people injured also were residents at the facility, which had 157 mentally disabled residents.
Uematsu, who gave himself up to police on Tuesday after the attack, had said in letters he wrote in February that he could “obliterate 470 disabled people” and gave detailed plans of how he would do so, Kyodo news agency reported.
According to CNN, the attacker was a former employee at the Tsukui Yamayurien facility.
“You could say there were warning signs, but it’s hard to say if this could have been prevented”, said Yuji Kuroiwa, the governor of Kanagawa prefecture, where the facility is located.
The letter was delivered before Uematsu’s last day of work at the centre, but it was unclear whether the letter played a role in his sacking, or even if his superiors had known about it.
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. NTV reported that he tied up caregivers before starting to stab the residents.
The attacker left dead or injured almost a third of the approximately 150 patients at the facility in a matter of 40 minutes early Tuesday, Kanagawa prefectural authorities said. Uematsu had personally handed the letter to staff at the residence of Tadanori Oshima, the Chairman of the Lower House. Satoshi Uematsu broke into the facility around 2 a.m. and supposedly slashed the patients’ necks, although details about the attack have not yet been released.
-Feb. 19, 2016: Yamayuri-en executives confront Uematsu over the letter and his earlier remark to colleagues that all the disabled should be put to death. Uematsu insisted that he was not wrong and quit the job.
Days later, he was questioned by police for handing out fliers near the facility that contained similar comments, and he was eventually committed to a mental hospital, where he was diagnosed as paranoid and dependent on weed.
The attack shocked neighbours, many of whom said they had a good relationship with both the staff and the residents of the home in the hilly, semi-rural community in Sagamihara. The official requested anonymity because of sensitivity of the issue.
“It would be desirable to establish a system that provides certain levels of monitoring, but that also creates the issue of privacy and prejudice”, Yasuhiro Yuki, a social welfare expert at Shukutoku University, told a TBS television talk show.
At the Yamayuri-en, officials had been uneasy since Uematsu left. At the recommendation of local police, the facility installed 16 security cameras in March at the complex where the about 150 patients lived in four two-story buildings, each with automatic door locks.
They added security guards during an event in June when outside guests visited the facility.
Murder suspect Satoshi Uematsu (in blue shroud) is escorted to a van heading to the prosecutor’s office from a local police station in the city of Sagamihara, Japan.
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“There may be something that happened to him recently” that triggered his murder spree, he said.
