Eight Children Killed in Knife Attack at Japanese School
Suspect in Custody

By Keiko Kanai
Reuters

IKEDA, Japan (June 8) - Eight children were killed and 15 people injured in Japan's worst school tragedy Friday when a middle-aged man with a history of mental illness went on a stabbing rampage at an elementary school in western Japan.

The injured were mostly 7 and 8-year-old students at the school in Ikeda, a suburb of the western city of Osaka. Seven of those killed were girls and one was a 6-year-old boy, Japanese media said.

Two teachers were also injured, police said, including one 28-year-old man who was in critical condition and underwent emergency surgery after the attack, considered unprecedented in traditionally safe Japan. Five children were also in critical condition, television reports said.

The tragedy began when the man, wielding an 11-inch knife, walked into a classroom in mid-morning and began to stab children in a rampage that media said lasted a little over 10 minutes.

"He came in holding a knife and started stabbing," a first grade girl said.

One sixth-grade girl told Reuters: "We were listening to an announcement over the loudspeaker, and then it was broken into by a scream and a noise like a desk falling down."

"Then I heard someone scream from below, 'Run!"'

Several children ran into a nearby supermarket yelling and crying for help, witnesses said.

"One of the boys, whose back was stained with red blood, fell in front of the cashier. He was pale and did not speak a word," a shop clerk told a television reporter.

Said one schoolboy: "I saw a person who had fallen down. I also saw blood."

Police were holding in custody a 37-year-old man who they said had previously undergone treatment for schizophrenia. "We have arrested a suspect," said a local police spokesman.

It was the worst mass-killing in Japan since the 1995 fatal sarin gas attack on crowded Tokyo subways by the Aum Shinrikyo (Aum Supreme Truth) cult which left 12 dead and thousands ill.

FRANTIC PARENTS

The motive behind the incident was unclear, but NHK public broadcaster said that the suspect had told police he had taken 10 times the usual dosage of tranquilizers and was babbling.

While school shootings, such the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, have become a grim part of life in the United States, random tragedy on such a scale is unheard of at Japanese schools.

The quiet of the summer day around the school, located in an ordinary residential area, was shattered by wailing sirens and the clatter of helicopters.

Ambulances lined the school driveway while students streamed out of the building and gathered on the school playing fields.

Frantic parents arrived at the school soon after, talking urgently into mobile phones. They later left with their children, tight-lipped.

The suspect, with a history of mental illness, told police he wanted to suffer the death penalty for his crime.

"I was fed up with everything," police quoted him as saying, adding that he had previously attempted to commit suicide.

"I want to be put to death."

Media said that the suspect had previously been arrested for allegedly putting tranquilizers in tea which he gave to teachers at a school where he was employed, but was not brought to trial because he was under treatment for mental illness.

The government launched an emergency task force headed by Education Minister Atsuko Toyama and sent officials to the site.

Japan's traditional sense of safety has been changing in recent years with the number of senseless crimes, often committed by teen-agers, rising rapidly.

"These are not ordinary times," said Katsuhiro Kinoshita, the father of a sixth-grader at the school. "I felt the blood drain from my face when I heard."

CRIME RISING

Voicing deep concern over rising crime rates, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi vowed to do whatever he could to restore Japan's reputation as one of the world's safest countries.

"The safe society is crumbling. We must think of ways to deal with this problem," Koizumi told reporters.

Last year, one 17-year-old boy bludgeoned passengers at a trendy Tokyo shopping district with a baseball bat after a fight with his father, another beat his mother to death with a metal bat, while a third stabbed an elderly neighbor to death because he wanted to experience killing someone.

In 1999, a 7-year-old schoolboy was murdered after a man entered a school playground and stabbed him to death.

One of the grisliest incidents of recent years, the 1997 murder and beheading of an 11-year-old boy, was carried out by his 14-year-old playmate.

More recently, there has been a wave of incidents on Tokyo's crowded trains, including one in which a man was killed by a fellow passenger enraged at his request for people to step back so he could board.

Reuters 11:12 06-08-01

Quoted:
They DO register baseball bats.

Semper Fi!

Ken Little