An elderly woman was stabbed at an apartment in Machida, Tokyo, on Tuesday evening and died shortly after being transported to hospital. The victim, Chizuko Akie, a 76-year-old resident of the apartment, was stabbed several times in the stomach and other parts of her body, according to the police. The incident occurred around 7:10 p.m. Tuesday.
Tokyo police have arrested four people on suspicion of robbing and abusing a man in his 40s with a mild intellectual disability after forcing him to drink large amounts of whisky, the Metropolitan Police Department said Sept. 26. The suspects — a 22-year-old company worker from Shizuoka Prefecture, a 24-year-old woman from Tokyo, a 21-year-old university student from Hokkaido, and a 19-year-old male restaurant worker — allegedly met the victim through social media and conspired to exploit his condition. Police said the four made the man drink over 700 milliliters of whisky in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward in June, stole his smartphone and used about 100,000 yen in electronic money. They also filmed the incident, which included acts of sexual humiliation, and later abandoned the victim near his home and again in Shizuoka Prefecture. All four have admitted to the allegations, according to the police.
Tokyo police have arrested four people on suspicion of robbing and abusing a man in his 40s with a mild intellectual disability after forcing him to drink large amounts of whisky, the Metropolitan Police Department said Sept. 26. The suspects — a 22-year-old company worker from Shizuoka Prefecture, a 24-year-old woman from Tokyo, a 21-year-old university student from Hokkaido, and a 19-year-old male restaurant worker — allegedly met the victim through social media and conspired to exploit his condition. Police said the four made the man drink over 700 milliliters of whisky in Tokyo’s Nakano Ward in June, stole his smartphone and used about 100,000 yen in electronic money. They also filmed the incident, which included acts of sexual humiliation, and later abandoned the victim near his home and again in Shizuoka Prefecture. All four have admitted to the allegations, according to the police.
Public prosecutors Wednesday sought the death penalty for Masanori Aoki, 34, who has been accused of murdering four people in Nagano Prefecture, central Japan, in May 2023. Aoki has been indicted on charges of fatally stabbing two local women and killing two police officers with a knife and a hunting gun in the city of Nakano on the evening of May 25, 2023.
According to the special fraud investigation division of the Osaka Prefectural Police, a man posing as a police officer called a woman in her 70s who lives in the prefecture in July, claiming that she was a suspect in a fraud case. During the call, he asked her to buy a smartphone later.
It was learned on the 9th that an accident occurred in December 2022 at Hitakami-en, a support facility for people with disabilities in Ishinomaki City, Miyagi Prefecture, in which resident Kana Abe (then 38) suffered severe burns and died while receiving bathing assistance. The water temperature was likely around 50 degrees Celsius. According to the facility’s accident report, at around 10:00 a.m. on December 30, 2022, Abe, who has intellectual and physical disabilities, was helped by two female staff members into a bathtub equipped with a lift, suffering burns including peeling skin from her right thigh. Staff members called 119 and she was taken to hospital, but she died on January 2, 2023.
A 38-year-old woman with disabilities died after suffering severe burns while bathing at the Hitakami-en facility in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, police revealed. Kana Abe developed extensive skin damage following staff-assisted bathing in 2022, and later died in hospital from respiratory failure caused by burns covering 60 percent of her body. A facility report suggested the bathwater temperature was about 50 degrees Celsius. Police are investigating the incident on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in death.
A former employee of a disability support facility in Nagasaki has been indicted for assaulting three residents with intellectual and physical disabilities, with prosecutors seeking an eight-month prison sentence at the Nagasaki District Court. The 49-year-old defendant admitted to striking the residents in the head and face, telling the court he became “irritated” when they did not listen to him. Prosecutors presented security footage showing the assaults and argued the violence had become habitual, while the defense sought a suspended sentence. A verdict is scheduled for October 1.
The family of a pregnant woman who died after being hit by a vehicle in Ichinomiya, Aichi Prefecture, is urging prosecutors to recognize her newborn daughter Hinami, who was left severely disabled due to the accident, as a legal victim.
The family of a pregnant woman who died after being hit by a vehicle in Ichinomiya, Aichi Prefecture, is urging prosecutors to recognize her newborn daughter—left severely disabled due to the accident—as a legal victim. Sayaka Togitani, 31, died two days after the May 21 incident, and her daughter Hinami was delivered via emergency cesarean section but suffered brain damage from fetal hypoxia. While the 50-year-old driver has been indicted for negligent driving resulting in Sayaka’s death, no charges have been filed in relation to Hinami, as she was a fetus at the time under Japan’s Criminal Code. On September 2, Sayaka’s husband, Yudai, submitted a petition with over 112,000 signatures calling for prosecutors to also pursue charges for the injury to Hinami. At the driver’s first court hearing the same day, they admitted guilt and apologized, while Yudai emphasized the importance of acknowledging his daughter’s life and suffering.
Barrier Free Japan