| Schoolgirl, 11, stabs classmate to death in Japan
Wednesday June 2, 2004
A 12-year-old girl was stabbed to death by an 11-year-old female classmate in south-western Japan yesterday, prompting more public anguish over violent crimes committed by children against their peers.
Satomi Mitarai, 12, bled to death after being stabbed in the neck with a paper-cutter during the lunchbreak at Okubo primary school in Sasebo.
Shocked parents rushed to the school in a quiet suburban neighbourhood on hearing of the attack.
The school did not comment on the killing, which has raised questions about the supervision of pupils outside the classroom.
The two girls were reportedly missing from their form room when the rest of their classmates began eating lunch. Moments later, one of them allegedly walked into the room with blood on her hands and led her teacher to the scene of the stabbing.
Kazuyoshi Tominaga, of the local fire department, said he had found Satomi lying face down in a third-floor room used for private study.
"She was unconscious and had stopped breathing," he said. "There was no one else in the room at the time."
The suspect, whose name is being withheld by police because of her age, was taken into custody last night and has reportedly confessed to the killing.
The attack was the latest in a string of brutal crimes committed by and against children in recent years.
In the most notorious case, two youngsters were murdered by a 14-year-old boy in Kobe in 1997. One of the victims, 11-year-old Jun Hase, was strangled and beheaded by his killer, who placed the child's severed head outside the gates of a local school. The killer, whose identity has not been revealed, was released in March after he had spent more than six years at a medical juvenile reform school.
In another case, a 12-year-old boy lured his four-year-old victim out of a shop in Nagasaki last year, stripped him and pushed him to his death from the roof of a multi-storey car park. The same month a boy of 13 was arrested in connection with the beating to death of a classmate in Okinawa.
In 2002 Japanese MPs, under increasing pressure to address the juvenile crime wave, lowered the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 14.
guardian.co.uk/japan | |
