|
| |
|
Stabbing whets child crime worry in Japan
|
Reuters
Wednesday, June 2, 2004
|
|
TOKYO A stunned Japan was searching for answers on Wednesday after an 11-year-old schoolgirl killed a classmate by slashing her throat, the latest in a string of violent crimes committed by children.
Japan, which had long prided itself on being relatively crime free, has in recent years been confronted by an increasing number of gruesome youth crimes that have prompted it to lower the age of criminal responsibility.
In the latest incident, 12-year-old Satomi Mitarai died from loss of blood after she was attacked by a classmate with a knife during the lunch break on Tuesday at their primary school in Sasebo, 980 kilometers, or 610 miles, west of Tokyo.
There was no clear motive for the attack, but Japanese media reports said there may have been trouble over Internet messages between the two girls, who were said to be friends.
The classmate was quoted as telling the police that she had called Satomi to a study room, where she attacked her. She returned to the classroom with her clothes bloodstained.
"I am sorry. I am sorry," the girl was quoted by the daily Yomiuri Shimbun as tearfully telling the police during questioning.
The killing appeared especially shocking because of the age of the children involved and the fact that both were girls.
"A sixth-grader killing a classmate with a knife - something like that happening is well beyond imagination," a government spokesman, Hiroyuki Hosoda, told a news conference Tuesday.
Yomiuri Shimbun, reflecting general puzzlement, asked, "What sort of connection did these two have? What set it off? Nothing is known."
Japanese media said that the assailant would appear before a family court, which could send her to a special reformatory for children. Children under 14 cannot be prosecuted, and officials have been reluctant to push the age any lower. In 1997, a 14-year-old schoolboy murdered two children and left the severed head of one of them outside the gates of a school in Kobe. The crime prompted calls for harsher penalties against juveniles, and in 2001 the age of criminal responsibility was lowered to 14 from 16.
The number of serious crimes by juveniles has continued to rise, however, and their age to fall.
Last year, a 12-year-old boy in Nagasaki confessed to abducting and murdering a four-year-old by pushing him off the roof of a parking garage. According to police figures, the number of minors aged 14 to 19 who committed serious crimes such as murder and robbery rose 11.4 percent to 2,212 in 2003, while the number of offenders under 14 rose 47.2 percent to 212. There have been eight cases in which primary school children have committed or attempted murder in the last 15 years.
|
|
|
Copyright © 2004 the International Herald Tribune All Rights Reserved
Printer Version
E-mail A Friend
Subscriptions