Sagamihara massacre trial defendant’s former partner testifies to change in defendant’s attitude towards care home residents

By Barrier Free Japan with extracts translated from NNN24 via Yahoo! Japan

January 17th 2020

YOKOHAMA – The former partner of the defandant in trial of a man charged with killing 19 people and injuring several others at a care facility for people with disabilities in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture, has spoken in court.

The defendant’s former partner said that the defendant referred to the residents of the Tsukui Lily Garden care facility as “cute” two years before the incident, but that his way of describing the residents became more severe about seven months before the incident, that he began to speak of people with disabilities as “unproductive.”

The partner remarked that the defendant became concerned about the position of the security camera at Tsukui Lily Garden four months before the incident, repeating statements suggesting the incident, such as “do it yourself” and “start a revolution.”