Japanese police on Friday arrested the man suspected of killing four people, including two officers, in a knife and gun attack in central Japan’s Nagano prefecture.
The suspect, who had been hiding since Thursday afternoon inside a house on a farm in Nakano (northeast of the city of Nagano), was arrested around 4:30 am (8:30 pm on Thursday in Lisbon). he told France. Press (AFP) a local police spokesman.
A woman who was injured in the attack but could not be immediately rescued succumbed to her injuries, bringing the death toll to four, the spokesperson added.
On Thursday afternoon, another woman was stabbed in the back by the suspect, who is believed to be in her thirties.
This man, described by the authorities as a maniac, shot dead two policemen who had arrived at the scene, before taking refuge in the house that belonged to his father, who would be the local mayor of Nakano, according to the Kyodo News agency.
The local police had specified during the night that two women managed to leave the house before the arrest of the suspect, one of them his own mother, according to Kyodo.
One of the witnesses said he was working on a farm when, shortly after 4 p.m. on Thursday (8 a.m. on a Thursday in Lisbon), a woman came running down the road to call for help before she fell.
“Behind her was a camouflaged man with a long knife, who stabbed her in the back,” he added to Japan’s NHK station.
This 72-year-old witness also said that he called the emergency services.
Still according to NHK, the man “received” the police with shotgun fire, leaned the gun against a window of one of the police vehicles and fired two shots.
The local authorities urged the inhabitants of the vicinity of Nakano – northeast of the city of Nagano (center) where the events occurred – to remain in their homes.
Voluntary homicides are very rare in Japan, where the carrying of firearms is highly regulated.
Japan was rocked last year by the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was killed with a homemade weapon while delivering an election speech in Nara, in the west of the country.
Last month, a young man was arrested after throwing an improvised explosive device at the acting Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, who was heading to a small fishing port in the Wakayama department (west), after emerging unharmed from the attack.
Source: TSF
