An 11-year-old girl slashed a female classmate to death with a razor knife yesterday in a shocking attack in an elementary school in southern Japan, police said.
The lunchtime assault happened in a classroom in Sasebo, 980km southwest to Tokyo, an official with the Nagasaki Prefectural police said on condition of anonymity.
Police in Sasebo said the victim suffered wounds to the neck and arms. She was stabbed with a small knife with a retractable razor used to cut paper, police said.
Police identified the victim as Satomi Mitarai, 12. The name of the attacker was not released, in accordance with Japanese legal protections for juvenile offenders.
Mitarai's bleeding body was discovered in a third-floor classroom by a teacher who called police. Agents quickly apprehended the young suspect, who was being questioned.
Prefectural police said the suspect had confessed, though they did not yet have a motive. TV footage showed police guarding the school and inspecting the classroom where the attack apparently happened.
The killing was committed during lunchtime, which in Japan is taken in the classroom. The stabbing, however, happened in a class where children were not eating.
Also yesterday, a 38-year-old Japanese woman repeatedly stabbed her teenage daughter with a kitchen knife and then slit her own wrist following an argument over going to school, police said yesterday.
Kazumi Isonishi, 38, was found barely conscious in her bathroom in Moriguchi, some 400km west of Tokyo, early yesterday after her 16-year-old daughter called police.
After breaking into the house, police found the bloodied daughter lying near her bed with nine stab and slash wounds to her back and chest.
"The mother told the daughter to go to school, it developed into an argument and then she stabbed the daughter and tried to kill herself," a Moriguchi city police spokesman said.
Increasing violence in Japan's schools and among youth has been a rising concern in recent years.
Last July, a 12-year-old boy was accused of kidnapping, molesting and murdering a four-year-old in the southern city of Nagasaki.
In the same month, a 14-year-old boy was arrested for beating a 13-year-old classmate to death in Okinawa.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
SPIRITUAL COUPLE: Martha Louise has said she can talk with angels, while her husband, Durek Verrett, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits Social media influencers, reality stars and TV personalities were among the guests as the Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Martha Louise, married a self-professed US shaman on Saturday in a wedding ceremony following three days of festivities. The 52-year-old Martha Louise and Durek Verrett, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, tied the knot in the picturesque small town of Geiranger, one of Norway’s major tourist attractions located on a fjord with stunning views. Following festivities that started on Thursday, the actual wedding ceremony took place in a large white tent set up on a lush lawn. Guests
Four days after last scanning in for work, a 60-year-old office worker in Arizona was found dead in a cubicle at her workplace, having never left the building during that time, authorities said. Denise Prudhomme, who worked at a Wells Fargo corporate office, was found dead in a third-floor cubicle on Aug. 20, Tempe police said. She had last scanned into the building on Aug. 16 at 7am, police said. There was no indication she scanned out of the building after that. Prudhomme worked in an underpopulated area of the building. Her cause of death had not been determined, but police said the preliminary
‘DISCONNECTED’: Politics is one factor driving news avoidance, a professor said, adding that people who do not trust the government are more likely to tune it out Hannah Wong cried when the Hong Kong government effectively forced the territory’s Apple Daily and Stand News out of business three years ago. Among the last news firms in the territory willing to criticize the government openly, many saw their end as a sign that the old Hong Kong was gone for good. Today, the 35-year-old makeup artist says she has gone from reading the news every day to reducing her intake drastically to protect herself from despair. Four years into a crackdown on dissent that has swept up democracy-leaning journalists, rights advocates and politicians in the territory, a lot of people
RSS