KOBE -- The 15-year-old Kobe boy being held in the grisly decapitation of Jun Hase and the attempted murder of three other elementary school children must undertake a psychiatric test, the Kobe Family Court stated August 4.
Judge Yasuhiro Igaki made his decision following the first round of the closed-door hearings being held at the family court late August 4. The boy has been at the Kobe Juvenile Detention Center since July 25 waiting for the inquiry. He will be held in the juvenile detention center for another 60 days until Oct. 2 so the psychiatric test can be administered.
After the test, to be given by two psychiatrists, the hearings will resume at the family court, which will decide what will happen to him and what his treatment, if needed, will be. The boy's lawyers had demanded the test because he is reportedly obsessed with the act of killing.
The boy's parents, who he has been refusing to meet, did not attend the meeting. Under Juvenile Law, people aged 16 and under cannot be prosecuted as criminal defendants. Those aged between 14 and 19, however, can be held responsible for crimes in other ways.
The teenager was arrested June 28 on suspicion of strangling 11-year-old Jun Hase on May 24 in Suma Ward in Kobe, decapitating him with a saw the next day, and then displaying his severed head in front of Tomogaoka Junior High School, his own school, on May 27.
He is also accused of attacking four schoolgirls in the same ward, variously using a hammer and a knife on two 12-year-olds, a 9-year-old, and 10-year-old Ayaka Yamashita, who died after being hammered on the head. The boy confessed to the crimes after he was taken into custody by police.