Shortly after 3 a.m., a man appeared at Tsukui Police Station, and admitted to perpetrating the killing.
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The man told police that he was a former employee of the facility, according to the report. Local news media reported that family members and neighbors began gathering at the facility early Friday, with some complaining that they had received no information from officials.
“This kind of incident is never heard of in Japan”, said Teruaki Sugimoto, a 66-year-old man who lives near the facility in Sagamihara, about 30 miles west of Tokyo.
The facility, set in extensive grounds, had about 150 residents at the time of the attack, according to local officials. “It’s better that disabled people disappear”, he continued.
“I thought it wasn’t appropriate for a facility worker”, the facility chief said.
Uematsu was reportedly hospitalized following the submission of the letter but was released some two weeks later.
In June previous year Uematsu came to be known to local prosecutors following an altercation with a man at a station in Tokyo during which the man sustained injuries. He was freed on March 2 after a doctor deemed he had improved, the official said.
Twenty of the victims were seriously injured.
In 2001, eight children at a primary school in Osaka were stabbed to death.
Police said they responded to a call about 2:30 a.m. from an employee saying that something terrible was happening at the facility in Sagamihara, just west of Tokyo.
A picture of one of the victims’ vehicle that he used to drive himself to the police station has been released.
Uematsu was said to use a hammer to break the window, Nippon TV reported.
Police are also investigating the incident as a murder case.
He said police together with government will work hard on the investigation “to grasp the whole picture”.
Ambulance crews and police are seen outside a facility for the disabled where a number of people were stabbed to death and injured July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo. Clad in a black T-shirt and trousers, he had a bag containing three kitchen and other knives in his hand.
Police had recovered a bag with several knives, at least one stained with blood, a Kanagawa prefecture official said.
The Tsukui Yamayuri-en facility provides both residential accommodation and day care and has a swimming pool, gym and medical clinic.
The many people wounded in the knife attack were transported to six hospitals “in the western Tokyo area”.
The dead ranged in age from 19 to 70 and included nine males and 10 females, Kyodo news agency reported.
Residents of Sagamihara said they were in shock. Around 115 of those residing at the facility have been categorized as level 6, the ministry said, the highest care level on the scale.
The knife attack by Uematsu is being called Japan’s largest mass killing by a lone individual since World War II, according to the Los Angeles Times. “We need to prevent this from ever happening again”.
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Comments to media by Yuji Kuroiwa, governor of Kanagawa Prefecture, during his visit to the facility on Tuesday also paint a telling picture.
