Documents and materials relating to Sagamihara care home killings to be permanently preserved

Written with extracts translated from NHK

March 18th 2020

SAGAMIHARA – Documents and materials relating to the killing and injuring of people with disabilities at a care home in Sagamihara city are to be permanently preserved.

A former employee, Satoshi Uematsu, 30, was sentenced to death in a case where 19 people were killed at Tsukui Yamayurien, a facility for people with intellectual disabilities in Sagamihara City.

Sagamihara City has responded to the Uematsu defendant, who indicated that he would kill the disabled, by taking measures to “ hospitalize the patient, ” or, for example, at the time of the incident, the fire department transported the victim from the scene. Many documents related to the case and the defendant were created.

The preservation period is to be determined in accordance with the importance and contents of the official documents, but since there are materials that expire at the end of this month, the facts of the case are left in detail for posterity and can be historically verified All the materials will be designated as “historical official documents” based on the ordinance of the city, and decided to preserve them forever.

Sagamihara City Information Disclosure Division Manager Kazuaki Yamaguchi said, “It was a serious incident, and we believe that it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that it can be verified in the future and that such incidents will never occur again.”