The Kawasaki Municipal Government said it will inspect a nursing facility where three elderly people fell to their death from the balconies of their upper-floor rooms in separate incidents in a two-month span last year. The deaths are considered suspicious.
It has also emerged that questions over standards of staff behavior at S Amiyu Kawasaki Saiwai-cho had come to light recently and that in March an 83-year-old resident died while taking a bath, although the city has said deaths of this nature are not uncommon compared with falls from balconies.
"Until last year, we had not received any reports of deaths from falls at the city's nursing facilities for several years," said Shinichi Sekikawa, the official in charge of Kawasaki's welfare services for the elderly. "We thought it was odd after the first two cases, but we didn't investigate them because the facility told us that the police concluded the deaths were accidental."