Wednesday, June 2, 2004
Japanese sixth-grader kills schoolmate with box cutter
11 year-old girl slashes student in empty room, leaves her to die
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TOKYO
An 11-year-old girl led a fellow sixth-grader to an empty classroom during their school lunch hour yesterday, slit her throat and slashed arms with a box-cutter, and left her to bleed to death.
The killing at an ordinary elementary school in southern Japan shocked the community, leaving many asking how such a tragedy could occur.
The body of Satomi Mitarai, 12, was found by a teacher after the girl who attacked her returned to class in bloody clothes. The teacher called police.
Mitarai died of blood loss after being slashed in the neck and arms with a retractable knife used to cut paper and boxes, police said.
Her father rushed to Okubo Elementary School in Sasebo, 650 miles southwest of Tokyo, after receiving a call that his daughter had been hurt.
"When I arrived, Satomi was already lying there collapsed. I couldn't believe what I was seeing," said Kyoji Mitarai, the head of the Sasebo bureau of the Mainichi newspaper.
"I can't put in words what I'm feeling right now. I can't understand it at all. I don't have a clue," he said.
He said that his daughter never spoke of disagreements with her classmates and appeared to get along well with them.
Authorities took the suspected attacker into custody for questioning. Police called her "Girl A," in accordance with Japanese legal protections that prohibit identifying juvenile offenders.
"Girl A" had called Mitarai out of their classroom as lunchtime was beginning and took her to a nearby room. In Japan, lunch is commonly eaten in classrooms.
The girls' teacher said she first noticed something was wrong when the two were missing, public broadcaster NHK reported. Shortly afterward, "Girl A" returned, smeared with blood.
Police said she confessed to the killing and said, sobbing, "I have done a bad thing." Authorities said they have not found a motive.
Serious juvenile crimes have become a rising worry in Japan in recent years.
Last July, a 12-year-old boy in Nagasaki - a city just north of Sasebo - was accused of kidnapping, molesting and killing a 4-year-old by shoving him off the roof of a car garage. In the same month, a 14-year-old boy was arrested for beating a 13-year-old classmate to death in Okinawa.
Just three years ago, legislators lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 14 from 16 amid public outrage over the beheading of a 10-year-old boy by a 14-year-old in 1997. Last year's killing in Nagasaki prompted many to wonder whether the line should be redrawn.
Violent juvenile crimes remain rare, however. The 1,986 "heinous crimes" - murder, robbery, arson and rape - committed by minors in 2002 represented just 1.4 percent of all youth offenses, according to the National Police Agency.
