TOKYO, July 26 (Xinhua) -- Police have arrested a Japanese male following a fatal stabbing spree at a care facility for people with mental disabilities in Kanagawa Prefecture west of Tokyo that took place in the early hours of Tuesday morning and left 19 people dead and 25 injured, mostly critically.
Local police stationed in Sagamihara City where the attack took place confirmed the arrest of Satoshi Uematsu, 26, in conjunction with the mass killings, after he turned himself in at around 3:00 a.m. local time, shortly after the savage stabbing rampage took place at the care facility.
Authorities quoted a bloodied Uematsu as saying I did it upon his arrival at Tsukui Police Station, where he had driven himself after the attack at the residential home that took care of people aged between 19 and 75 years old with mental disabilities, to hand himself over to the police.
Uematsu was also quoted by the police as saying, "It's better that the disabled disappear.
Investigative sources said that the assailant, who, although currently unemployed, used to work at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en care facility where he systematically bludgeoned dozens of disabled residents, may be harboring deep resentment for those with disabilities, or for the facility itself where he used to work.
Local government officials said that Uematsu began working at the facility as a part-time employee in December 2012, but became a regular worker four months later.
Uematsu, who was carrying a bag full of bloodied knives and blades of different sizes when he arrived at the police station after the frenzied attack, was living half a kilometer from the care facility, and is currently undergoing mental health checks, sources close to the matter said Tuesday, as part of the polices investigation.
Prefectural officials said Tuesday that Uematsu was himself forcibly committed to a mental hospital following a police recommendation in February this year, as city officials deemed him unstable and likely to do harm too others. He tested positive for marijuana use during his time being sectioned, local media reported Tuesday.
In the same month prior to his hospitalization, he reportedly visited the private residence of a lower house member of parliament and handed a letter to security personnel there outlining his wishes for there to be a "world where the disabled can be euthanized."
"I am able to kill a total of 470 disabled people," part of the contents of his letter read. He also said in his letter that the Tsukui Yamayuri-en care facility would be one of his targets.
He was released from hospital in March as his health was considered to have improved, but at which point he had either left his job of his own volition, as some local media have reported, or he may have been fired based on his mental incapacity, as is also being reported.
In June last year Uematsu came to be known to local prosecutors following an altercation with a man at a station in Tokyo during which the man sustained injuries.
His actual motive for the deaths of 10 women and 9 men, according to the current death toll from hospital officials, however, is still being investigated, according to local officials and it is not yet known whether he saw his actions as emancipating the disabled, or the more likely scenario being reported that has left the nation in shock and disbelief, that he simply wanted to massacre those with mental impairments.
Hospital staff talking to local media have said the death toll will likely rise, as many of those bludgeoned in the attack sustained serious life threatening injuries.
Kitasato University Hospital admitted 13 of the injured patients who had been stabbed and slashed, with staff there saying that at least eight of them had suffered serious neck injuries.
Other local hospitals who have had an influx of injured patients have said that the injuries they are dealing with are consistent with a knife attack that was aiming specifically for the necks of the victims and bore signs the attacker had the intention to kill.
Police were first alerted to the mass killing following a desperate call from a shaken employee just after 2:30 a.m. who said that a man wielding a knife had just broken into the facility.
The employee was quoted as saying to the police that a man had broken into the facility and that something horrible was happening.
The operator of the care home said Uematsu had broken into the facility by smashing a window with a hammer in the east residential building. Police retrieved a hammer from outside the broken window, they confirmed, adding that Uematsu had almost certainly gained access to the building at this point.
Being that he had knowledge of the layout of the facility, investigators said that Uematsu made his way around the building systematically stabbing the vulnerable residents multiple times as they either slept or lay helpless in their beds.
Police, however, were on the scene within minutes, the facility owner said, by which point the assailant had driven off, meaning his multiple slayings were carried out swiftly from bed to bed and with almost military-like precision.
Uematsu was carrying a bag with at least three different types of blade in it, the police have said, and was also in possession of fastening straps, according to public broadcaster NHK, some of which were used to restrain one of the facilitys staff members.
The fact that the assailant prepared the bag, at least three knives and the restraints in advance has left local investigators to believe that the attack was planned in advance and was wholly premeditated and not carried out randomly.
On turning himself into the police, Uematsu was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and unlawful entry to a building, local police sources said.
The residential care facility, the name of which translates in English to Tsukui Lily Garden, is run by a social welfare organization and was initially developed by the local government.
The facility, with its 30,000-square-meter area, can house up to 160 residents and according to local sources as many as 149 residents were on site when the attack happened, many of whom are believed to be in their sixties.
The facility is located some 50 km from central Tokyo in a residential area surrounded by houses and an elementary school and housed residents aged between 18 and 70 years of age, with 40 of them believed to be aged over 60.
All of the residents, the health ministry said, are designated as being between levels 4 and 6 in terms of how much care they require. Around 115 of those residing at the facility have been categorized as level 6, the ministry said, the highest care level on the scale.
Tuesdays attack marks the worst mass killing Japan has seen in decades, with the government here describing the the attack as highly distressing.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that his government will do everything in its power to determine exactly what and how the events at the care center unfolded with an aim to preventing such an occurrence from happening again, with his sentiments echoed by his top spokesperson.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a press conference that two health ministry personnel had been dispatched to the care facility on a fact finding mission, as the public has become more vociferous on social media sites asking how someone who had already been in the governments mental health system and received treatment, as well as being on its criminal watchlist for being dangerous, could have been allowed back into the public to kill and injure dozens of also care-requiring individuals with diminished mental and physical capacities.
Kanagawa Governor Yuji Kuroiwa, for his part, offered his "sincere apologies and condolences" to the victims on Tuesday and said that his prefectural government would do its utmost to ensure that such a tragedy doesnt happen again.
Local media here also quoted disbelief and condolences coming from overseas, including that from the U.S. who offered its deepest condolences for the families whose loved ones were killed in the horrific attack.
While Japan, statistically, is often represented as a safe country, other deadly postwar mass murders here include the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo cults sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subway system which killed 13 people and injured thousands more and a 1999 attack which saw a man ram his car into a station in Shimonoseki station and go on a stabbing frenzy killing a total of 5 and injuring 10.
In 2001, 8 children were killed and 15 injured following a stabbing spree at an elementary school in Ikeda, which rocked the nation, and in 2008 after ploughing his truck into pedestrians in Tokyos Akihabara district, a knife-wielding man killed a total of 7 people and injured 10 others.
Also in 2008, 16 lives were lost following a deadly arson attack at a video parlor in Osaka.
