KOBE -- Police officials, detectives and private citizens visited on Friday the Asahi Shimbun's Hanshin Bureau in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture, to lay flowers and offer prayers for a reporter who was gunned down there 15 years ago by an unknown assailant.

After offering a prayer at an altar set up in the bureau for Tomohiro Kojiri, Hyogo Prefectural Police Chief Kaoru Okada said he wished the slain reporter could guide police from heaven to help them solve the crime.

"Although the statute of limitations for the 1987 murder ran out at midnight Thursday, we will continue investigating the case," Okada said.