THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
April 5, 2022 at 15:51 JST
FUKUOKA—Prosecutors here charged a former principal and a staff member at a nursery school over the heatstroke death of a 5-year-old boy who was trapped in a bus for hours last summer, sources said April 4.
The Fukuoka District Public Prosecutors Office indicted, without arrest, Yoko Urakami, 44, and a 58-year-old female nurse on charges of professional negligence resulting in death.
Urakami was the principal of Futaba nursery school in Nakama, Fukuoka Prefecture, when Toma Kurakake died. The nurse was in charge of discharging children from the school bus on that day.
The sources did not say if the suspects have admitted to or denied the charges.
According to the indictment as of March 31 and other sources, a school bus carrying seven children, including Toma, arrived at the nursery school on the morning of July 29, 2021.
Urakami and the nurse were preoccupied with comforting a crying child when they locked the bus and walked away. Toma, however, was still inside.
The boy was stuck in the bus in sweltering temperatures until he was discovered after 5 p.m. He died of heatstroke.
Fukuoka prefectural police in December 2021 referred Urakami and the nurse, as well as two other staff members, to prosecutors on suspicion of professional negligence resulting in death.
Prosecutors did not have sufficient evidence to indict the other two, according to the sources.
“I hope the two (suspects) will receive the most severe penalty as possible, and I want the other two who were not indicted to think again about the fact that Toma’s life ended in harrowing agony,” the boy’s mother said in a statement released through her lawyer.
(This article was written by Naoki Nakayama, Daichi Itakura and Koki Furuhata.)
Photo
A boy who was trapped in a school bus died of heatstroke at Futaba nursery school in Nakama, Fukuoka Prefecture, in July 2021. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
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