Die In Knife Attack At Care Facility West Of Tokyo

Nineteen people have been killed in a knife attack at a care home for people with mental disabilities in the Japanese city of Sagamihara.

Uematsu, wearing a black tee shirt reportedly turned himself into the police and the Asahi Shimbun newspaper said he told police, “I want to get rid of the disabled from this world”. He was investigated by police for making the threats and sent to a hospital for an emergency evaluation for delusional behavior, local media reported, citing police officials.

He was arrested without incident after he turned himself in at a police station nearby, according to Kyodo News Service.

Though little is known of Uematsu’s background, the Japanese Parliament office told the AP that he attempted to deliver a letter to a local legislator in February, outlining his intentions of committing an attack on two facilities. Kanagawa Gov. Yuji Kuroiwa has since apologized for not acting on it. The attack is the deadliest act of mass murder in Japan since the end of World War II.

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Uematsu lived near the facility, and a neighbor described him as a polite, young man who always greeted him with a smile.

According to Satake, the working staff in such facilities is being primarily chosen on the basis of the interviews and in accordance with several criteria which Uematsu doesn’t seem to possess.

“We received information from the police that there is no evidence of the attacker being related to Islamic State”, said Yoshihide Suga, the Japanese government’s spokesman and Chief Cabinet Secretary.

Uematsu promised in the letters to execute the killings swiftly, without hurting staff and said he hoped to be found “not guilty by reason of insanity”.

He knew the staffing would be down to just a handful in the wee hours of the morning, Japanese media reports said.

Police have named the only suspect as Satoshi Uematsu (26).

The employee was quoted as saying to the police that a man had broken into the facility and that something disgusting was happening. In the letter, he called for “a revolution”, demanding that all disabled people be put to death through “a world that allows for mercy killings”.

Eight children were stabbed to death at their school in Osaka by a former janitor in 2001.

“This is a peaceful, quiet town so I never thought such an incident would happen here”, said Oshikazu Shimo, one of many residents of the town who gathered near the three-hectare facility.

SAGAMIHARA, Japan-A mass stabbing in Japan at a home for disabled adults shocked a country with little violent crime, and left authorities pondering missed signals.

The comfort level is high enough in Japan that it is common practice for first-grade students to go to and from school on their own, after parents accompany them for the first month or so, even in a major city such as Tokyo. Japan has strict gun laws and possession of firearms by the public is rare. In 2008, seven people were killed by a man who slammed a truck into a crowd of people in central Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district and then stabbed passers-by.

The country hasn’t experienced mass violence by extremists since 1995, when the religious group Aum Shinrikyo released lethal sarin gas in the Tokyo subways, killing 13 and sickening thousands.