7-Year Term Sought for Senior Japanese Government Official and Elderly Driver over Fatal Tokyo Accident

From Jiji Press

July 15 2021

TOKYO – Public prosecutors demanded a prison term of seven years on Thursday for a 90-year-old former senior Japanese government official over a high-profile fatal runaway car accident in Tokyo in 2019.

The demand was made during the man’s trial at Tokyo District Court.

In the accident, the car driven by Kozo Iizuka ran a red light and drove onto a crosswalk in the busy Ikebukuro district of Tokyo’s Toshima Ward in April 2019, killing a woman, 31, and her 3-year-old daughter, according to the indictment. Nine others were also injured.

Iizuka once served as head of the now-defunct Agency of Industrial Science and Technology under the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, now the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry.

In February this year, the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office indicted him without arrest on charges of negligent driving resulting in death and injury.