The 26-year-old man later turned himself in at a police station, admitting to officers: “I did it”.
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Security camera footage played on TV news programs showed a man driving up in a black auto and carrying several knives to the facility.
Questions were being asked about why he had been allowed to leave the hospital where he was admitted in February for mental evaluation following his explicit threats. The facility employs more than 200 people, including part-time staff, with nine of them working on the night of the attack, said Tatsuhisa Hirosue, an official in the welfare division at Kanagawa prefecture, where Sagamihara is located.
Authorities identified the attacker as Satoshi Uematsu, who had been fired and held a grudge against Tsukui Yamayuri En care centre. Parts of the property were sealed off with yellow police tape.
The attacker left dead or injured almost a third of the approximately 150 patients at the facility in a matter of 40 minutes early Tuesday, Kanagawa prefectural authorities said. Uematsu reportedly told police in no uncertain terms, “I did it”.
The attack happened about at 2:30 am local time on Tuesday morning at the facility for handicapped people in Sagamihara.
After the July 22 killing of nine people in Munich, Germany, Uematsu tweeted a photo of two Japanese men holding what appear to be toy guns, with the message “No gun, Yes toy” and “Shooting in Germany at the same time – it’s fun if it’s toys”. The driver opened the boot to remove objects before walking toward the facility. Bent over in the back of a police auto, his distinctive blond hair tumbling across his forehead, he smiled warmly at the media throng outside.
The Kyodo news agency reports that the killer told investigators that a desire to “save” people with critical disabilities is what motivated his attack.
Officials also learned that Uematsu started telling his colleagues that disabled people should be all put to death, Kaoru Irikura, head of Yamayuri-en facility, told reporters Wednesday.
The Yomiuri Shimbun called the decision to release Uematsu “appalling”, and called for tighter security at care facilities.
“It would be easier to understand if there had been a warning but there were no signs”, said Akihiro Hasegawa, 73, who described Uematsu as a polite man who always greeted him with a smile, Reuters reported.
A man accused of carrying out Japan’s worst mass killing since the end of the Second World War appeared to be smiling as he was transferred from police custody to see prosecutors.
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But now the town of Sagamihara and the entire nation are in shock, after a stabbing rampage at a center for the disabled left 19 people dead.
