“All I was thinking about was to save his life,” says physician for KyoAni suspect

From Jiji Press

May 26 2021

Content has been altered to withhold the suspect’s name

Yonago, Tottori Pref – Doctor Takahiro Ueda made all-out efforts to save the life of the suspect of a deadly arson attack on a Kyoto Animation Co. studio in 2019, as he hoped to help uncover the truth behind the crime. 

“All I was thinking about was to save his life,” Ueda, 49, said in an interview with Jiji Press a year after the arrest of the suspect, 43, who himself suffered critical burns to his entire body in the alleged attack on the No. 1 studio of the company, better known by anime fans as KyoAni, in Fushimi Ward of the city of Kyoto on July 18, 2019.

Ueda, who led the treatment team, said he thought “it would be difficult” to save the suspect when he first saw the suspect at Kindai University Hospital, located in neighboring Osaka Prefecture.

According to the doctor, now professor at the Emergency and Critical Care Medical Center of Tottori University Hospital in Yonago, Tottori Prefecture, the suspect was in mortal danger with 93 pct of his body burned and his body temperature below 34 degrees Celsius.

Ueda and his team cultured a small portion of suspect’s skin left unburned under his waist bag and transplanted the cultured skin to other parts of his body repeatedly.