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Nineteen disabled people were feared dead and 45 people were injured after an attack by a knife-wielding man at a facility for the disabled in Japan early on Tuesday, national broadcaster NHK reported.
Police in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, about 40km southwest of Tokyo, have arrested Satoshi Uematsu, a 26-year-old former employee at the facility, Japanese media reported.
They said staff called police at 2.3am local time with reports of a man armed with a knife on the grounds of the Tsukui Yamayuri-En facility.
The 3-hectare facility, established by the local government and nestled on the wooded bank of the Sagami River, cares for people with a wide range of disabilities, NHK said, quoting an unidentified employee.
Media reports said the man, wearing ablackT-shirt, did not have aknifewhenheturnedhimself in at a nearby police station. Police said they were still investigating possible motives.
Asahi Shimbunreported that the suspect was quoted by police as saying: “I want to get rid of the disabled from this world.”
Fifteen people were confirmed dead while four were “in cardiac arrest”, the media reports said. The wounded were taken to at least six hospitals in the western Tokyo area.
Twenty-nine emergency squads responded to the attack, Kyodo reported.
“We are still confirming details of the case,” a police spokesman added.
A man identified as the father of a patient in the facility told NHK he learned about the attack on the radio and had received no information from the centre.
“I’m very worried but they won’t let me in,” he said, standing just outside a cordon of yellow crime-scene tape.
Kyodo, citing the facility’s website, said the centre had a maximum capacity of 150 people.
Such mass killings are rare in Japan. Eight children were stabbed to death at their school by a former janitor in 2001.
