Six dead in Tokyo stabbing frenzy

08/06/2008| IslamWeb

A man went on a stabbing spree Sunday in a Tokyo neighborhood famed for comic-book subculture, killing at least six people and leaving more than a dozen others injured, officials and reports said.

The assailant, who later told police he was "tired of living," swerved a truck into a crowd of pedestrians shortly after noon in Tokyo's bustling Akihabara area before jumping out screaming and stabbing strangers.

The assailant was identified as Tomohiro Kato, 25. He first said he was a gangster before retracting his story.

"I came to Akihabara to kill people. It didn't matter whom I'd kill," he was quoted by Jiji Press as telling police.

By the time Kato dropped his knife at the gunpoint of a police officer, 17 people lay bloodied on the street of the crowded district, according to fire department and police officials.

Jiji Press and other Japanese media said that six people were dead -- five men aged 19, 20, 29, 47 and 74 and a 21-year-old woman -- marking a rare deadly crime in a city famed for safety.

Ambulances with sirens blaring raced to the scene, where the assailant's white Isuzu truck was abandoned with a shattered windshield on streets that were closed to traffic on a balmy Sunday afternoon.

Hundreds of stunned pedestrians stared from a distance as medical workers set up green plastic sheets in the middle of an intersection to give privacy as they gave emergency treatment.

The daylight attack fell on the anniversary of one of modern Japan's most ghastly crimes -- a stabbing frenzy that left eight children dead at an elementary school in 2001.

Wataru Amano, a 26-year-old truck driver who often visits Akihabara, voiced shock as he surveyed the scene.

"I was shocked to hear the news as I've visited this place quite often," Amano said. "I could have been a target if I had been here a few hours ago."

"I'm afraid this will give a negative image on Akihabara, where people are coming from around the world," he said.

Akihabara is best known for major electronics stores and in recent years has mushroomed into a haven for Japanese subculture, pulling in tourists from home and abroad interested in comic books and video games.

"When I passed by, I saw a man collapsed on the street. He was stabbed in the chest and bleeding badly," a young woman said. "He was unconscious."

It is seven years to the day since a mentally disturbed man went on a rampage with a butcher's knife at the Ikeda elementary school in the western city of Osaka.

Mamoru Takuma, who had an apparent grudge against children of the elites, stabbed to death eight children.

At Takuma's sentencing, the judge called the killings "one of the most heinous cases in Japan's criminal history." Takuma was executed in 2004 at the age of 40.

The elementary school attack stunned Japan, which prides itself on its safety and moved to step up security at schools.

PHOTO CAPTION

An injured person on a stretcher is carried by rescue workers after man stabbed pedestrians at Tokyo's crowded Akihabara electronic shopping street on June 8.

AFP