Many people Sunday visited the scene of an attack on a care home for mentally disabled people in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, south of Tokyo, four years ago to mourn the victims.
Yasue Kaihara, Deputy General Manager of Kyosen Kanagawa Branch, which is built at a welfare work place for people with disabilities, said, “I do not understand why the staff members performed the acts pointed out by the third-party committee that could be considered abuse.”
After previously saying it would end investigations into the possible abuse of residents where nineteen disabled residents were killed at a care home in Sagamihara city, the Kanagawa prefectural government reverses it’s decision not to investigate the abuse further.
As the COVID-19 crisis continues, the investigation into abuse of people with disabilities at a facility in Kanagawa prefecture is about to be dismissed. New suspicions of abuse emerged last autumn regarding the “Tsukui Yamayurien” facility in Sagamihara City, in Kanagawa Prefecture, which became a stage of mass murder four years ago. The prefecture suddenly announced on May 18 that it would stop verifying cases of abuse, and some are skeptical.
The Sagamihara case and the Kobe abuse case revealed the plight of people with mental disabilities.
As the disability welfare facility in Kanagawa; where 19 disabled residents and 26 others were injured by Satoshi Uematsu in July 2016, is rebuilt in a new location, part of the name of the old facility “Yamayuri” was registered with the Japanese Sign Language Institute on March 27 so that the massacre is not forgotten.
The death penalty was handed down to Satoshi Uematsu on March 16 for killing 19 residents at a facility for the intellectually disabled in Sagamihara , and later his lawyer dropped the appeal and the death penalty was finalized. “I was wrong to continue the trial, but there was a conflict in my heart,” Uematsu said.
The sentence is set to become final at midnight (3 p.m. GMT) as Monday is the deadline for filing an appeal. It is rare for a capital punishment sentence to be finalized after only the first trial.
Uematsu’s lawyer had appealed the ruling to the Tokyo High Court on March 27, but according to the court, Uematsu withdrew the appeal on March 30.
The defense team acting on behalf of a former care home employee, Satoshi Uematsu (30), who was sentenced to death for killing 19 disabled people and injuring 24 others at a care home in Sagamihara City, applied to appeal the sentence on Wednesday 25th March.
