Tokyo police have made progress in investigating the murder of two female Taiwanese students after raiding the dorm room of a Taiwanese male student yesterday afternoon.
No one has seen the male student since Thursday morning, when Lin Chih-ying (林芷瀅) and Julia Chu (朱立婕) were found covered in blood in their dorm, Japanese media reports said.
The reports said that Tokyo police have identified the Taiwanese male as a key suspect in the murders and seized several boxes of items from his room, including keys to the women’s dorm room and bloodstained material.
The suspect reportedly studied at the same language school as the women, the Intercultural Institute of Japan, in the Taito area of eastern Tokyo.
Government officials refused to release any further information about the suspect.
At a press conference chaired by Chen Tyau-her (陳調和), deputy chief of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Japan, Chen said that the office had provided Tokyo police with “information on a person,” at their request, to assist in the investigation.
He would not confirm media reports that the man being searched for by Japanese police was a Taiwanese student.
In Taipei, Su Qi-cheng (蘇啟誠), deputy secretary-general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Association of East Asian Relations, in charge of Japan affairs, said police in Japan had not commented on the Japanese media reports.
“We were told by the police that they have already obtained vital clues and would pursue the suspect [to whom the clues pointed] in full force,” Su said, adding that more than 200 police are involved in the investigation.
To further the investigation, autopsies were performed on the two students late yesterday evening, with the consent of their families, Su said.
The bodies of the students were released to the families after the autopsies were conducted and are likely to be cremated before being sent back to Taiwan, he added.
Media in Japan reported police as saying that the two students were most likely killed between 9am and 10am on Thursday.
The police found one of the women lying in the doorway of the dormitory and the other in a bedroom, at 11am, after they received a report from their teacher, who had been unable to reach them.
One of the women died at the scene, the other a short time later after being rushed to hospital.
Both had reportedly been stabbed in the neck, shoulder and back.
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