The suspect in the stabbing deaths of 19 people at a facility for the disabled in Japan was hospitalized just months ago after writing a letter saying “all disabled should cease to exist”, a local official told NBC News.
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An official from Kanagawa prefecture, which takes in Sagamihara, identified the suspect and said he had turned up at the police station with the murder weapons.
In 2001, eight children at a primary school in Osaka were stabbed to death. In an interview with Sputnik, Souhei Satake, representative of Japanese Association of Assistance to persons with disabilities, said that he was struck by the cruelty of the crime.
Investigative sources believe that the assailant, who claimed he used to work at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en care facility where he systematically bludgeoned dozens of disabled residents, may be harboring deep resentment for those with disabilities, or for the facility itself where he used to work.
The rambling letter – which included his name, address and phone number – was sent to local police where Uematsu lived, Kyodo news reported.
“They have been well received and blended in the community, and we were on very friendly terms”, 68-year-old Chikara Inabayashi said, while taking care of watermelons in a family garden.
A deranged former employee at a home for the mentally and physically disabled is accused of murdering 19 people-“nine men between the ages of 41 and 67 and 10 women between the ages of 19 and 70″-in a small town about 25 miles from Tokyo, according to The Asahi Shimbun”. In February, he threatened to “obliterate 470 disabled people” in letters that he wrote and tried to give to the speaker of the House of Representatives.
Uematsu promised in the letters to execute the killings swiftly, without hurting staff and said he hoped to be found “not guilty by reason of insanity”.
Uematsu was hospitalised on February 19, reportedly the same day he left his job, but was discharged 12 days later when a doctor deemed he was not a threat, the Sagamihara city official said.
Police have one man in custody. ABC reported that the attacker knew there would not be many employees on duty in the early morning hours. Nineteen patients were killed, and two of the 26 people injured also were residents at the facility, which had 157 mentally disabled residents. It is Japan’s deadliest mass killing in decades.
Uematsu “broke a glass window and intruded into the facility at about 2:10am (17:10 GMT) and stabbed those staying there”, Shinya Sakuma told a press conference in the prefecture’s capital Yokohama.
Little is known yet of Satoshi Uematsu, the 26-year-old who committed today’s attacks in Sagamihara.
“Many of the facility residents can not communicate very well verbally, because they are rather seriously disabled, but we smile at each other and dance together with the help of caretakers and volunteers”, she said.
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Prior to Tuesday’s attack, a 1995 Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system was the worst mass killing in the country since World War II. He wrote he would then turn himself in to the police. The incident shocked Japan and led to increased security at schools. Many people lost their life and many are in critical situations, may be their lives can be saved or can be died too.
