A 21-year-old man has been arrested along with two male and three female teenagers in connection with the slaying of a 16-year-old girl, the teens' former classmate, whose corpse was found on a mountain in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture.
The arrests Wednesday followed that a few days earlier of another 16-year-old girl, who reportedly confessed to the slaying on July 12. All of the suspects are being held on an initial charge of abandoning a corpse.
The five teens, all age 16, have owned up to abandoning the body and some have also confessed to assaulting the girl, who was a vocational school student, in a car, according to the police. After the first girl arrested confessed, police on July 13 found the corpse of a teenage girl in the woods. Her identity has not been released, nor has the cause of death.