Police have arrested a man who killed four people, including a police officer, with a knife and shotgun in a rural village in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. The man is said to be the eldest son of the chairman of the Nakano City Council.
According to local media such as Japan’s NHK and Yomiuri Shimbun on the 26th, the police took advantage of the moment when man A, who was holding a sit-in in a house at around 4:30 am, came out of the building for a short time to secure a new recruit. A is accused of killing a total of four people, including two women and two police officers.
Earlier, around 4:30 p.m. the previous day, a report was received by the police that a man had stabbed a woman with a weapon. Ryoki Tamai (46), assistant police officer (inspector level), and Takuo Ikeuchi (61), police officer (sergeant level), dispatched to the scene at Nakano Station, but Mr. A fired a shotgun at them.
The woman and the police officer who were stabbed were transported to a nearby hospital, but died in the end. The woman was identified as a 66-year-old civilian. After opening fire at the police, Mr. A hid in the house of Masamichi Aoki, chairman of the city council in nearby Nakano City.
According to NHK, Mr. A was identified as the son of chairman Masamichi. At around 8:00 PM on the same day, several gunshots were heard in this home. Then, at 8:30 pm, Chairman Masamichi’s wife escaped, and around midnight another woman succeeded in escaping.
The Japanese Metropolitan Police Agency dispatched special forces to the scene and arrested Mr. A after 12 hours of confrontation. Later, an elderly woman was found lying around a private house, but she was already dead. The police applied for an arrest warrant on charges of murder and are investigating the motive for the crime against Mr. A.
According to eyewitness statements, the possibility of a ‘don’t ask crime’ is also raised. A resident who witnessed Mr. A’s crime at the time said, “Mr. A chased after the woman who had already been stabbed and ran away and brandished her weapon again. She said to him, ‘Why are you doing this?’ and she said, ‘I killed because I wanted to.’”
Meanwhile, the scene of the incident is about 2 km west of Shinshu-Nakano Station, a rural village mainly composed of houses and rice fields. The police designated a 300m radius of the site as an evacuation zone, banned traffic, and evacuated residents to a nearby middle school gymnasium.
Source: Donga
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.