A 23-year-old truck driver from Shizuoka Prefecture has been arrested for allegedly stealing seven television sets from an elementary school earlier this month, local police said Saturday.
Police named the man as Nobuaki Imayama, of the town of Ohito in the prefecture. They also arrested a suspected accomplice after Imayama himself made an anonymous phone call to police saying he had witnessed the crime.
According to investigators, Imayama and two others entered Yugashima Elementary School in the town of Amagi-yugashima in the early hours of May 10 and stole seven TV sets, worth a total 180,000 yen. The trio are also suspected of taking six TV sets from an elementary school in Ohito a few days earlier.
Police said Imayama telephoned police on Thursday to say that he had seen the robbers make off with the TV sets. However, police decided to speak to him directly after his account threw up some suspicious details, at which point he confessed to being one of the three thieves. The remaining man is still at large.
According to the suspect, 11 of the television sets have already been sold off via recycling shops in Ibaraki and Kanagawa prefectures.