Hate for the Disabled: Man with Knife kills 16, injure others In Japan

A knife wielding man has left atleast 19 people dead after attacking a disabled facility outside Tokyo, Japan early Monday. 

Guardian reports the suspect identified as Satoshi Uematsu was quoted as saying that he wanted to “get rid of the disabled from this world,” while the New York Times Tokyo bureau chief Motoko Rich said that the knife wielding suspect in the attack outside Tokyo, Japan said disabled people should “disappear.”

The suspect, a former employee, broke into the facility with a knife and came armed with a bag full of sharp objects, several of which were bloodstained, according to Guardian. Stabbings are reportedly more common in Japan than are gun crimes; there was only one gun death in the country in 2015, and all of eight crimes attributed to guns in the same time span.

This will be the first case of hate crime against the disabled in morgen history. 

The call about the knife-wielding suspect came into the police station at about 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday morning, when an employee called and said that something “horrible” was happening at the facility, according to CBC News. 

The facility, the Tsukui Yamayuri Garden, houses people with a range of physical abilities and ages, with residents of the facility ranging in age from 18 to 75 years.

There was some initial confusion as to the number of victims in the knife related attack in the residential facility just outside of Tokyo. Initially, it was estimated that 15 were killed, but that number has since been elevated to 19. 

The wounded in the knife attack were taken to six area hospitals, and many of the victims are still in serious condition. Uematsu has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and trespassing in this knife related crime, leaving it to fall into modern Japan’s history as one of the worst single perpetrator mass murders in the country’s history.