Quality control experts at Mitsubishi Motors Corp. may have suspected that inadequate component strength was to blame when the first accident involving a wheel detaching from a Mitsubishi truck was reported in 1992, police sources said Friday.
Investigators suspect that Takashi Usami, a former Mitsubishi Motors official in charge of large-vehicle operations, may have been aware that company quality control experts were concerned about the possibility of a defective component, they said.
Usami was arrested Thursday, along with six other former Mitsubishi Motors officials, over an accident in 2002 in which a wheel came off a Mitsubishi trailer truck, hitting and killing a woman and injuring her two children.
He was vice president of the large-vehicle division at the time of the accident.