Japan knifing suspect wanted government approval to kill disabled people

Tokyo: The suspect in a fatal stabbing spree in Japan on Tuesday had been hospitalised early this year after expressing a willingness to kill disabled people if the government approved, a city official said.

Police in the town of Tsukui near Tokyo contacted the suspect, Satoshi Uematsu, and he was involuntarily committed to hospital on Feb. 19 after he had tried to present a letter to the speaker of the lower house of Japan's parliament, said an official from nearby Sagamihara city who declined to be named.

Read: At least 19 killed, about 20 injured in knife attack near Tokyo

Uematsu told police he would kill many severely disabled people if the national government approved such an action, the official told Reuters by phone. He was discharged on March 2 after a doctor deemed his condition had improved, the official said.

Nineteen people were stabbed and killed in their sleep and at least 25 wounded at a facility for the disabled in Sagamihara in the early hours of Tuesday.

Read: Knife attack at home for disabled in Japan stuns neighbours

Police said they responded to a call at about 2:30 a.m. from an employee saying something horrible was happening at the facility in the city of Sagamihara, 50 kilometers (30 miles) west of Tokyo.

Police said there were several casualties but did not provide any numbers. The Sagamihara City fire department says that 19 people were confirmed dead in the attack. The fire department said doctors at the scene confirmed the deaths.

Mass killings are relatively rare in Japan, which has extremely strict gun-control laws. In 2008, seven people were killed by a man who slammed a truck into a crowd of people in central Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district and then stabbed passers-by.

Fourteen were injured in 2010 by an unemployed man who stabbed and beat up passengers on two public buses outside a Japanese train station in Ibaraki Prefecture, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Tokyo.