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19 feared dead, 25 injured in knife attack outside Tokyo
Kyodo/via Reuters
Nineteen people were feared dead and 25 injured after an attack by a knife-wielding man at a facility for the disabled in Japan early on Tuesday, the national broadcaster NHK reported.
The police in Sagamihara, in Japan's Kanagawa prefecture, about 25 miles southwest of Tokyo, have arrested Satoshi Uematsu, a 26-year-old former employee at the facility, Japanese media reported.
A prefectural official said 19 victims were "in a state of cardiac arrest" and 25 people were wounded, 20 of them seriously. Japanese media had reported earlier that up to 45 people may have been wounded. Japanese officials often describe people as being in cardiac arrest before they are officially declared dead.
They said the staff called the police at 2:30 a.m. local time with reports of a man armed with a knife on the grounds of the Tsukui Yamayuri-En facility.
The 7.6-acre facility, established by the local government and nestled on the wooded bank of the Sagami River, cares for people with a wide range of disabilities, NHK said, quoting an unidentified employee.
Media reports said the man, wearing a black T-shirt, did not have a knife when he turned himself in at a nearby police station. The police said they were still investigating possible motives.
Asahi Shimbun reported that the suspect was quoted by the police as saying: "I want to get rid of the disabled from this world."
Fifteen people were confirmed dead, while four were in cardiac arrest, the media reports said. The wounded were taken to at least six hospitals in the western Tokyo area.
Twenty-nine emergency squads responded to the attack, Kyodo reported.
A man identified as the father of a patient in the facility told NHK he learned about the attack on the radio and had received no information from the center.
"I'm very worried but they won't let me in," he said, standing just outside a cordon of yellow crime-scene tape.
Kyodo, citing the facility's website, said the center had a maximum capacity of 150 people.
Such mass killings are rare in Japan. Eight children were stabbed to death at their school by a former janitor in 2001.
(Additional reporting by Eric Beech and Jon Herskovitz in Washington; Writing by Lincoln Feast; Editing by Sandra Maler, Grant McCool and Paul Tait)
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