The Osaka Family Court ordered a 17-year-old boy Thursday to face criminal charges for stabbing a teacher to death and wounding two others at an elementary school in Neyagawa, Osaka Prefecture, in February.
Presiding Judge Fuminaka Takahashi said the boy was mentally competent and should not be put on probation due to the "heinousness" of the crime, in which he "prepared a knife in advance and killed one person and wounded two."
Captured at the scene, the boy, whose name is being withheld as he is a minor, basically owned up to the crimes during four sessions of his juvenile trial, which began at the end of June.
The court questioned him and his parents on details of the crimes and the boy's current state of mind.
The Osaka District Public Prosecutor's Office sent the case to the family court on June 15 with an opinion that he should face criminal charges because psychiatric tests determined he was mentally competent.
Prosecutors had asked to participate in the juvenile trial, but the court rejected the request.
According to the court, the boy entered Neyagawa Municipal Chuo Elementary School at around 3 p.m. on Feb. 14 and killed Michiaki Kamozaki, 52, and seriously wounded another teacher and a dietitian with a knife. The boy was a graduate of the school.
Hirokazu Sakane, the principal, said he hoped the youth "will humbly accept the ruling to be handed down" in the criminal trial and "pay for what he has done."