One day before he tried to hand a letter to a top Japanese lawmaker offering to kill hundreds of disabled people, the suspect in Japan’s worst mass killing in decades tweeted: “I don’t know if it’s right, but action is the only way”.
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The killing of 19 people at a home for the mentally disabled raised questions about whether Japan’s reputation as one of the safest countries in the world is creating a false sense of security.
Investigative sources said that the assailant, who, although now unemployed, 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.
A woman who lives across from the facility told Japanese broadcaster NHK that she saw police cars enter the facility around 3:30 a.m. 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.
Kyodo, citing the facility’s website, said the center had a maximum capacity of 150 people.
In 2001, a man killed eight children and injured 13 others in a knife attack at an elementary school in the city of Osaka.
According to police, Uematsu delivered a handwritten letter to the official residence of the House of Representatives speaker in February, at about the time he left his job, in which he suggested that he was planning to kill people at the facility.
Police in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, about 25 miles (40 km) southwest of Tokyo have arrested a man in his 20s, Japanese media reported. He had three knives with him, at least one covered in blood, and tie cables in his auto.
-Uematsu now faces at least one charge of attempted murder, but authorities anticipate more charges to come, the Times reported.
“This is a very heart-wrenching and shocking incident in which many innocent people became victims”, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a regular news conference in Tokyo.
According to the Kanagawa prefectural government, the facility was opened by the prefectural government in 1964.
Residents of the small town of Sagamihara said the last murder in the area was 10 years ago. “I was astonished, that’s the only thing I can say”.
“It is better that disabled people disappear” claims man armed with knives after attacking care center outside Tokyo. In 2008, a man rammed a rented two-ton truck into a crowd of shoppers at a busy Tokyo intersection, then jumped out and began stabbing people, killing seven.
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In 1995, a cult group released sarin on several Tokyo subway lines, killing 12 people, severely injuring 50 and causing vision problems for close to 5,000 others.
