Police said they responded to a call at about 2:30 a.m. from an employee saying something frightful was happening at the facility in the city of Sagamihara, 30 miles west of Tokyo.
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Japanese police have raided the house of a 26-year-old man suspected of stabbing to death 19 people, while he smiled for the cameras ahead of his interrogation.
This is the sadistic grin of the man who is accused of brutally murdering 19 people in their sleep in an attempt to rid the world of disabled people. The facility where he worked was so unnerved, it confronted him. In the area, there are 150 apartments for physically disabled people ranging from age 18 to 75. But he was left alone, free, unmonitored.
The attack – in which nine men and 10 women were killed, and 26 more people injured – is Japan’s deadliest mass killing since the end of World War II.
The first apparent concerns were raised this year.
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”.
Yuji Kuroiwa, the governor of the Kanagawa Prefecture, has apologized for not acting in advance, according to the Associated Press. “We need to prevent this from ever happening again”.
Around the time of the attack, a Twitter account in Uematsu’s name posted a photo of a man in a red tie, shirt and jacket with the message: “I hope for world peace”.
Uematsu, 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, the Kyodo news agency reported.
In mid-February, Uematsu also visited Parliament.
After the letter was intercepted, Uematsu was “hospitalised” by officials in the Kanagawa prefecture. About a half an hour afterwards, he turned himself into the Police.
Those who know Uematsu described their shock at finding out what he did.
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. Tests showed he had used marijuana and suffered from paranoia, NHK public TV reported. The official requested anonymity because of sensitivity of the issue.
For crime prevention, the country relies on its social system in which a group mentality sacrifices individual freedom for collective safety, said Nobuo Komiya, a criminology professor at Rissho University in Tokyo.
But that’s a discussion that is also taking place at a wider, national level.
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At the Yamayuri-en, officials had been uneasy since Uematsu left.
