Suspects in 6 Year Old Boy’s Death in Kobe also Arrested for Mistreating Boy’s Wheelchair-Using Grandmother

By Barrier Free Japan with extracts from The Kobe Shimbun, The Mainichi

June 26 2023

KOBE — Police on June 22 found the body of a 6-year-old boy near the home of his 34-year-old mother here who was arrested by Hyogo Prefectural Police the same day along with three siblings on suspicion of illegally confining and injuring the boy’s grandmother.

Hyogo police suspect that the four may have been involved in the death of the boy, Nao Hosaka and are investigating the case.

Arrested were Nao’s mother, 34, and her brother, 32, and twin siblings both 30. Nao had lived with his 57-year-old grandmother, Yumiko, and the four suspects in an apartment complex in Kobe’s Nishi Ward.

The four are also accused of conspiring to mistreat Nao’s grandmother, Yumiko, intermittently confining her in a closet at the home between around March and June 20. On June 19, they allegedly hit her in the back several times with a metal pipe, injuring her. Police have not disclosed whether the four suspects, including Nao’s mother, have admitted to or denied the allegations against them.

The discovery of the body of Nao, aged 6, who lived nearby, in a grassy area in Kobe City’s Nishi Ward on the evening of June 22 was triggered by the fact that two days earlier, his grandmother, 57, who lived with him, was found on a street in Tarumi Ward, 7 km from her home. A man who was at the scene and reported the incident to the Hyogo Prefectural Police recalled the situation at the time in an interview with the Kobe Shimbun.

The man, 66, lives nearby.

Shortly after 11:00 p.m. on June 20, he was returning home after shopping when he saw a woman alone on a wheelchair, staring down at him. In the dimly lit street, there were plastic bottles and notebooks that appeared to be the woman’s belongings lying around.

The man, feeling ‘out of the ordinary,’ asked, “Are you all right? It’s not safe to be alone at this late hour. The woman’s voice came back weakly, “I live close by, so I’ll be fine.

The woman’s face was lifeless and she had brown bruises. She got up from her wheelchair and tried to step forward, but collapsed to her knees after two or three steps.

When the man saw her, he called 110 and asked if he could protect the wheelchair-bound woman who was alone, and turned her over to the prefectural police Tarumi police officers. This woman was Nao’s grandmother, Yumiko Hosaka.

Yumiko explained to investigators that she had snuck out of the house when her family was not home. According to local residents, Yumiko had been living with her siblings in a municipal housing complex near where she was taken into custody about 20 years ago.

According to the prefectural police force’s first criminal investigation division, Yumiko had been locked in the closet from the outside. She had meals regularly, but is believed to have been locked up several dozen times over the space of three months. She escaped when the four went out, and police took her into protective custody in Kobe’s Tarumi Ward on the evening of June 20. She was in a wheelchair, and suffering from eye and back injuries, but her injuries were not life-threatening, police said.