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During the late hours in Japan, on Saturday, June 10, 2018, passengers aboard the Shinkansen train were sent into a panic as a man wildly attacked another. With a knife, the culprit stabbed one man to death and delivered minor injuries upon two women.
The scene happened around 9:50 p.m., when the bullet train left westward from Tokyo Station. Soon, an emergency stop was made as a call went through declaring there was a knife-wielding man aboard the train. The man responsible was found on top of the unconscious victim, just before his arrest at Odawara Station.
The train had been carrying over 800 passengers at the time of the emergency. And as the victims were attacked, passengers tried desperately to escape the threat. Television footage captured crying passengers shouting frantically to “Just keep going.” The people tried everything to get away from the stabbing threat. One passenger, unharmed from the scuffle, described the scene to be that of how dominos fell one after another, “scared to death.”
Kanagawa Prefectural Police successfully identified the culprit as a 22-year-old man named Ichiro Kojima. The mans’ background included that of being an unemployed citizen living in Okazaki, Aichi Prefecture. He had a history of being hospitalized for mental illness and had just moved out of his relatives’ home last December.
Kojima admitted to having no previous relations with the victims when questioned saying, he was just feeling frustrated and it resulted in him stabbing and killing the victim. He wanted to take it out on someone. As his case was sent to the public prosecutors’ office, police made it so that his arrest charge was switched from alleged attempted murder to murder.
Written by Brielle R. Buford
Sources
The News an Observer: Knife attack on Japan bullet train leaves 1 dead, 2 hurt
the japan times: 22-year-old passengers arrested after man dies in random knife attack on Osaka-bound bullet train
BBC News: Deadly stabbing on Japan bullet train
Top and Featured Image Courtesy of Wally Gobetz’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License