TOKYO (AA) – A Japanese man suspected of killing 19 people at a facility for the disabled near Tokyo was sent to prosecutors Wednesday after telling police he sought to “save” those with multiple disabilities.
Local news agency Kyodo reported that Satoshi Uematsu, a 26-year-old former employee of the facility in Kanagawa Prefecture, will face murder charges for the attack, which occurred early Tuesday morning when most of the patients would be sleeping.
He later turned himself in to a police station with a bag containing three knives, all bloodstained.
Investigative sources were cited as saying that Uematsu insisted he had “no remorse” about the attack at the Tsukui Yamayuri En facility in Sagamihara city.
In addition to the 19 fatalities, who were all facility residents, at least 26 people were injured — three of them seriously.
Investigators quoted Uematsu as saying that “it would be better if the disabled disappeared” and “there’s no question I stabbed people who could not communicate well.”
Uematsu worked at the facility from December 2012 until February this year, and Sagamihara’s city authority said local police had questioned him Feb. 19 for telling co-workers that he would “kill the disabled”.
He also reportedly attempted to submit a letter to the speaker of parliament’s lower house in which he wrote “I am able to kill people”, and was committed by involuntary admission to a mental hospital until March.
The death toll, at 19, makes it the largest mass murder in modern Japanese history, even more than the infamous 1995 sarin nerve gas attack on the capital’s subway system which killed 12.
