Japan Stabbing Spree Leaves 19 Dead, 20 Seriously Wounded
What you need to know
A stabbing spree near Tokyo that left 19 people dead overnight is considered “one of the worst single-perpetrator mass murders in postwar Japan.”
A man killed 19 people and wounded 25, 20 of them seriously, in an attack in Japan overnight.
The stabbings took place at a care facility for people with disabilities, in Kanagawa, about 50 kilometers south of Tokyo, Japan Times quotes an official as saying.
Police have arrested a 26-year-old man, who was a former employee of the center, Reuters reports.
After news of the event spread, “families of the residents as well as neighbors of the facility flocked to the scene to get information about the residents’ condition," Japan Times reports.
The paper describes the attack as “as one of the worst single-perpetrator mass murders in postwar Japan.”
It notes three similar cases over the past 15 years: a 2001 Osaka stabbing attack in which eight children were killed; a 2008 event in Tokyo in which seven people died after a man drove a truck into a crowd; and a 2010 arson in Osaka that killed 16.
Edited By: Olivia Yang