Photo/Illutration A police van leaves the Kanie police station in Kanie, Aichi Prefecture, to transport the 14-year-old student who allegedly stabbed another student to death to the Nagoya District Public Prosecutors Office on Nov. 25. (Toshi Yamazaki)

YATOMI, Aichi Prefecture--A 14-year-old student who allegedly stabbed to death another student on Nov. 24 at a municipal junior high school here is believed to have smuggled the knife into the school in a backpack.

Aichi prefectural police sent the student, who is in his third year at the school, to the Nagoya District Public Prosecutors Office on the morning of Nov. 25, after upgrading the charge against him from attempted murder to murder.

Yuzuki Ito, 14, who died after being stabbed, was also a third-year student at the school. The cause of death was hemorrhagic shock.

According to investigators, the alleged assailant came to the school on the morning of Nov. 24 with a knife with a 20-centimeter blade hidden in his backpack, which he always carried when going to school.

After arriving at the school, he told Ito, who was in a classroom on the second floor, to come to a corridor and stabbed him in the stomach, according to police. 

According to the prefectural police and the junior high school, the victim, immediately after being stabbed, returned to the classroom under his own power.

A teacher called a staff room and reported the need to call an ambulance.

Police were notified through a 110 call at around 8:10 a.m. on Nov. 24 that there was trouble between students and that someone had been stabbed.

The victim was rushed to a hospital but pronounced dead. 

The alleged attacker is reported to have put down the knife after being instructed to do so by teachers. 

Teachers then restrained him and police officers from the Kanie police station who rushed to the school made an emergency arrest on suspicion of attempted murder.

The student admitted to the killing, telling police, “I certainly did it.”

Prefectural police consider that it is likely that the attack was premeditated as the student has confessed to having bought the knife on his own before the incident.

It is believed that the victim was stabbed from the front and that the knife penetrated his liver. The prefectural police are expected to conduct a judicial autopsy on the victim to analyze the injuries on Nov. 25.

The alleged attacker reportedly told police that he had been bullied.

Police have been investigating the motive for the attack, including whether his account about bullying is true. They will also talk to other students at the junior high school as part of the investigation. 

The Yatomi Board of Education says that it is not aware of any bullying reports involving the boy. 

The two students are in different third-year classes at the junior high school but were in the same second-year class in the last academic year. They also attended the same elementary school.

The principal of the junior high school told a news conference that the school was unaware of any issues between the two students, saying, “So far we are not aware of anything.”

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