Arrested doctors knew Kyoto based woman with ALS seeking to end her life through SNS

From Jiji Press

July 23 2020

Content is altered to withhold the names of the suspects

KYOTO – Kyoto police arrested two doctors on Thursday for allegedly murdering a woman who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, at the patient’s request.

One of the physicians aged 42, is from Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, northeastern Japan, and the second, aged 43, is from Tokyo are suspected of drugging the ALS patient, then 51, to death at the woman’s home in the western Japan city of Kyoto in the evening of Nov. 30 last year, investigative sources said.

According to the Kyoto prefectural police department, the two suspects were not the woman’s attending doctors and were unacquainted with her. They apparently got to know each other through social media.

The woman was living alone while receiving 24-hour support from caregivers.

After the two doctors left her home, the woman’s condition suddenly worsened. She was taken to hospital and was confirmed dead there. From her body, the hospital detected substances of a drug that she was not normally taking.