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.
The family of a pregnant woman killed in a May traffic accident is urging prosecutors to recognize her newborn daughter, left severely disabled, as a victim. Sayaka Togitani, 31, was struck by a car and gave birth by cesarean section before dying. Her baby, Hinami, requires a ventilator. The driver, Naoko Kono, 50, was indicted for negligent driving resulting in death, but not in relation to the baby. Over 112,000 signatures have been submitted supporting the family’s request.
Voices have been raised in Japan demanding countermeasures for molestation, which shows no sign of disappearing.
In June, Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department arrested a man in his 30s on the spot on suspicion of groping a female high school student on a Tokyo Metro train running in the capital’s Koto Ward. The man had groped the student two or three times a week for some 10 months since August 2024. The number of molestation cases detected by the MPD reached 606 between January and June. Trains accounted for 70 pct of the crime scenes, while 30 pct of the victims were 10 to 19 years old.
The apology from the Shiga police chief, Hisaaki Ikeuchi, came after a local court ruled that the prefectural police’s investigation into the 45-year-old former assistant nurse, Mika Nishiyama, was illegal.
Barrier Free Japan