Man Stormed Disabled Home, Kills 19, Injured 25 Disabled People In Japan
A knife-wielding former employee has killed 19 people
and injured 25 at a care centre for people with disabilities in Japan,
the country's worst mass killing in decades.
Satoshi Uematsu, the 26-year-old attacker who reportedly threatened to kill hundreds of disabled people earlier this year, later turned himself in at a police station admitting to officers: "I did it."
He reportedly also said: "The disabled should all disappear."
Broadcaster NTV said the man told police he had been fired and held a grudge against the care centre.
The dead ranged in age from 18 to 70 and included nine men and 10 women, the Kyodo news agency has reported.
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The attack began in the early hours of the morning when Uematsu allegedly broke a first-floor window to get into the building.
A doctor at one of the hospitals where victims were taken described some with "deep stab" wounds to the neck.
Staff called police at 2:30am local time on Tuesday with reports of a man armed with a knife on the grounds of the sprawling three-hectare Tsukui Yamayuri Garden facility.
The man handed himself over at a police station half an hour later, a spokesman at Kanagawa Prefecture Police said.
A local official identified the suspect and said he had turned up at the police station with the murder weapons.
"When Uematsu turned himself in, he was found carrying kitchen knives and other types of knives stained with blood," Shinya Sakuma told a press conference in the prefecture's capital Yokohama.
Mass killings are extremely rare in Japan and typically involve stabbings, due to Japan's strict gun laws.
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