Woman handed suspended term over hammer attack at Japan univ. campus

From Kyodo

June 27 2025

TOKYO – A Japanese court on Friday sentenced a woman to three years in prison, suspended for four years, for injuring eight students in a hammer attack at a university campus in suburban Tokyo.

The court found Yoo Ju Hyun, a 23-year-old South Korean, guilty of injuring the students on Jan. 10 at Hosei University’s Tama Campus in Machida. The presiding judge put her actions down to a mental disorder she was suffering.

The series of attacks on defenseless students were “dangerous and shocking,” said Presiding Judge Keita Nakajima in handing down the ruling at the Tokyo District Court’s Tachikawa branch.

Yoo, who was a second-year student in the university’s Faculty of Social Sciences at the time, had claimed she was bullied and insulted by some students.

Nakajima said while it cannot be said that there was no bullying at all, there was no evidence that the eight victims, some of which suffered head injuries, had insulted her.

However, the judge said that Yoo’s actions were influenced to a considerable extent by an obsessive-compulsive disorder and other factors.