This is the 26-year-old knifeman who hacked 19 people to death at a care home in Japan because he wanted to ‘get rid of the disabled from this world’. Satoshi Uematsu broke into the centre by smashing a window, killing 19 people and seriously injuring 26 people as they slept, in what has been deemed the country’s worst mass murder since World War II.
He went into the Tsukui Yamayuri En centre in Sagamihara, outside of Tokyo, brandishing a knife at around 2.30am local time.
Police were called to the scene after residents saw a man with blond hair armed with a blade in black clothes in the centre’s grounds.
Uematsu, who is a former employee at the care centre, was arrested after he walked into a police station 30 minutes after the gruesome attack and stated ‘I did it’.
Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun reported that the suspect told police: ‘I want to get rid of the disabled from this world.’
Kyodo news service has released a letter that Uematsu tried to present to Tadamori Oshima, the speaker of the lower house of Japan’s parliament, in February calling for euthanasia of disabled people.
In it, Uematsu described detailed plans on how he planned to carry out such an attack during the night when there were few staff working. He wrote he would then turn himself in to the police.
Uematsu said that by killing the disabled he would stimulate the world economy and maybe even prevent a World War III.
‘Now is the time to carry out a revolution and make an inevitable but tough decision for the sake of all mankind,’ Uematsu wrote.
‘My goal is a world in which, in cases where it is difficult for the severely disabled to live at home and be socially active, they can be euthanized with the consent of their guardians,’ the letter reportedly said.
After he attempted to deliver the letter in February, he was taken to hospital but released about two weeks later.
A Twitter account named by Japanese media as belonging to Uematsu shows a man with blond hair grinning in a tweet sent at 2:50am this morning.
Alongside the image, the man wrote in Japanese: ‘May there be peace in the world’.
He added in English ‘beautiful Japan!!!!!!’.
The 26-year-old had ‘a number of sharp weapons in his bag, a number of them bloodstained’ when he turned himself in to police, according to local media.
Officers, who arrested him on suspicion of attempted murder and trespass, said he had worked at the centre until February when he was sacked.
Officials say at least 19 people were killed in the frenzy attack, while another 26 were left seriously injured and taken to six different hospitals to be treated.
The death toll could make this the worst mass killing in Japan in the post-World War II era.
Police said they were still investigating possible motives. Some reports said he held a grudge after being fired from his job at the facility.
Government officials have ruled out any link to Islamic extremism as a motive.
‘This is a very heart-wrenching and shocking incident in which many innocent people became victims,’ Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference.
Armed police encircled the local government supported centre, which offers support to 150 people with a wide range of disabilities aged between 19-75.
The centre provides rehabilitation activities, accommodation and a medical clinic. Television footage showed a number of ambulances parked outside the facility, with medics and other rescue workers running in and out. Almost 30 ’emergency squads’ responded to the attack.
A man identified as the father of a patient in the centre told NHK he learned about the attack on the radio and had received no further information.
‘I’m very worried but they won’t let me in,’ he said, standing just outside a cordon of yellow crime-scene tape.
A woman who lives opposite the centre told reporters: ‘I was told by a policeman to stay inside my house, as it could be dangerous.
‘Then ambulances began arriving, and blood-covered people were taken away.’
Akie Inoue said her daughter knew the suspect from events at the facility when she was in elementary school.
‘I was surprised to hear that the culprit was a person from this neighborhood,’ she said. ‘My daughter knew the culprit, I mean, they were acquainted. They would greet each other when they would meet and she tells me that he was a very kind person. We are all very shocked.’
Her daughter, Honoka, said: ‘He had a cheerful impression… He was the kind of person that would greet you first.’ A U.S. government statement issued by the White House expressed shock at the ‘heinous attack’.
‘The United States offers our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of those killed in the heinous attack today in Sagamihara, Japan,’ it read.
‘We also pray for the speedy recovery of the dozens of individuals who were wounded. There is never any excuse for such violence, but the fact that this attack occurred at a facility for persons with disabilities makes it all the more repugnant and senseless.
‘The thoughts of the American people are with our Japanese friends as they mourn the lives lost.’
The city is home to a large US Army depot called the Sagami Army Depot.
Sagamihara, which has a population of around 720,000, last made international news in 2012 when one of the suspects in the 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo subway was arrested there.
The stabbings are likely to shock Japan, a country with one of the lowest crime rates.
n 2001, a man stabbed eight children to death and wounded 15 other people at a secondary school in Ikeda.
In 2008, a man drove a lorry into a crowd in Tokyo, running people over before going on a stabbing rampage. He killed seven and injured 10.
The disabled centre attack comes after Mayu Tomita, a Japanese pop star, was left in a coma in May when a fan stabbed her dozens of times after she allegedly turned down a gift he had sent her.
Tomohiro Iwazaki, 27, later confessed to stabbing Tomita in the neck and chest.
He claimed he ‘ambushed’ the star because she returned a gift he sent her. In March last year, five people were also stabbed to death in a knife attack on a Japanese island.
A man was arrested after the victims were discovered in two houses. Media reports said those killed range in age from 60 to 80 and lived in homes set among farms in the city of Sumoto on Awaji Island.
