A former employee killed 19 people at a home for the mentally disabled early Tuesday morning in Sagamihara, a city 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Tokyo.
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The suspect worked at the facility until February, broke in through a window about 2 a.m. Tuesday, Kanagawa Prefecture officials said at a news conference.
Asahi Shimbun reported that the suspect was quoted by police as saying: “I want to get rid of the disabled from this world”.
Local media reports said, he has been arrested. “My goal is a world where people with multiple disabilities can be euthanized with their guardians’ consent if it’s hard for them to live at home or take part in social activities”.
The brutal killings have shocked Japan, one of the safest countries in the world.
All of the residents, the health ministry said, are designated as being between levels 4 and 6 in terms of how much care they require. “I hope that disabled people will disappear (from this world)”, Uematsu told police.
A woman who said she used to work at the facility said many patients were profoundly disabled. “I can kill 470 disabled people”.
A hearse leaves the Tsukui Yamayuri-en, a facility for the mentally disabled where a number of people were killed and dozens injured in a knife attack Tuesday, July 26, 2016, in Sagamihara, outside Tokyo.
Yasuyuki Deguchi, a criminologist, said Uematsu’s alleged actions were typical of someone who bears a grudge and seeks revenge, because it appeared he planned out the attack, and then he turned himself in to police.
“It’s unthinkable that something like this could happen not just in Japan but, here in our community”, Mitsuo Kishi, a 76-year-old man who lives near Uematsu, also told the Post.
The employee was quoted as saying to the police that a man had broken into the facility and that something disgusting was happening.
The governor of Kanagawa prefecture, Yuji Koroiwa, has apologised for not acting on warning signs. The man wore a black T-shirt and pants, reports said.
FILE – In this June 8, 2008 file photo, police investigators examine the crime scene of Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district after a man slammed a truck into a crowd of shoppers, jumped out and went on a stabbing spree, killing seven people.
“This is a peaceful, quiet town, so I never thought such an incident would happen here”, said another neighbor, Oshikazu Shimo, one of many Sagamihara residents who gathered nearby as the buzz of cicadas was heard in the humid summer air. Holding a knife and a cloth covered in blood, the killing ended but the damage had been done. In Japan strict laws make it hard for average citizens to obtain a gun.
In 2001, eight children at a primary school in Osaka were stabbed to death.
People living near a facility for the handicapped where 19 people were killed in a knife attack describe the facility as a friendly place whose staff and residents joined in community events.
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And, of course, there was the 1995 release of sarin gas by the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo in Tokyo’s subway system that killed 12 people and harmed thousands – an attack that stands out because it was committed by an ideologically motivated group rather than an individual.
