A 22-year-old Chinese ex-student in Japan was sentenced to life Friday for murdering a woman in Osaka in December 2001 and killing a man regarded as a father figure for foreign students and wounding his wife during a robbery the following month in Oita Prefecture.
The Oita District Court also sentenced Kim Min Su, a 29-year-old South Korean, to life and Chinese accomplice An Fengchun, 26, to 14 years for their roles in the slaying of the Oita man, Satoshi Yoshino, a 73-year-old owner of a construction company in Yamaga, and the wounding of Yoshino's wife Emiko, 75, on Jan. 18, 2002.
The judge said the 22-year-old escaped capital punishment, the sentence demanded by prosecutors, because he was "19 years old at the time of the crime and was mentally immature."
Two other suspects in the Oita case -- Po Zhe, 24, and Zhang Yue, 26, both from China and believed to be the ringleaders -- left Japan four days after the crimes and are on an international wanted list.