aitama
A juvenile acquaintance of a 16-year-old boy who was found Tuesday partially buried in a dry riverbed north of Tokyo has texted on a messaging app that he killed a person, investigative sources said Wednesday.
The body was identified by police as Tsubasa Inoue, a resident of the town of Yoshimi in Saitama Prefecture.
The police have also found that a violent assault on Inoue was captured on video.
The police have been questioning several male juveniles who came forward. Some have admitted to involvement in the victim's death, the sources said.
Police also were carrying out an autopsy to determine the cause of death.
Two other male juveniles had visited a police box to report that a friend had texted "I killed a person" on the Line messaging app, the sources said.
Inoue's naked body was found at 8 a.m. Tuesday by a man living nearby. His lower half and upper left side were covered by gravel on the dry bed of the Toki River in Higashimatsuyama.
Part of the river had been submerged Monday because of heavy typhoon rains, according to people living nearby.
Several juveniles on motorcycles had been witnessed late Monday afternoon around the dry riverbed. The police are looking into the link between the witness accounts and the incident.
