THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
August 22, 2022 at 16:46 JST
Headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Department (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
A junior high school girl arrested over the random stabbing of a mother and daughter in Tokyo on Aug. 20 told police the attack was a rehearsal to kill her own family, according to investigative sources.
“It was a dry run to kill my mother and younger brother,” the 15-year-old girl told investigators, sources said. “I stabbed (them) to find out if I can kill people.”
The girl, a resident of Toda, Saitama Prefecture, told investigators that she wanted to kill her mother because she was filled with hate after she realized her personality had become similar to her mother’s.
She said she plotted to take her brother’s life as well because she thought that he would find it unbearable to see his mother killed.
Police arrested the girl at the scene of the crime on suspicion of attempted murder of a woman, 53, and her 19-year-old daughter in the capital’s Shibuya Ward.
According to police sources, the young girl told investigators after her arrest that she had assaulted the pair because she wanted to get the death penalty.
She also said she had never met them before.
The attacker approached the two from behind while they were walking down a street and then stabbed them with a kitchen knife at around 7:20 p.m.
The assault was carried out on a narrow street lined with restaurants near Shinsen Station on the Inokashira Line.
The victims sustained injuries to the back and elsewhere on their bodies.
The daughter suffered a cut about 10 centimeters deep that reached her kidney.
Doctors expect their injuries will take about three months to heal.
In addition to the kitchen knife used in the assault, the suspect had two other knives in her pocket.
The teenager said she brought them from home, which she left by bicycle after noon that day.
She took a train from JR Musashiurawa Station in Saitama to Shinjuku Station in Tokyo.
“I got to the place where I attacked them after looking for a site with few people,” she said, according to the sources.
(This article was written by Ryo Oyama and Soichi Odate.)
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