A 35-year-old woman charged with killing two of her daughter's kindergarten classmates in Nagahama, Shiga Prefecture, a year ago pleaded not guilty Friday in the Otsu District Court.
Zheng
Yongshan, on trial in the slaying of two kindergarteners, sits Friday in
the Otsu District Court in Shiga Prefecture.
KYODO ILLUSTRATION "I stabbed sand dolls, not humans," Zheng Yongshan told the court. "They did not bleed or scream. The two children are still alive."
Zheng's lawyers said she cannot be held criminally liable because she was mentally incompetent at the time of the murders. They said Zheng, a Chinese national, is being treated for schizophrenia.
Prosecutors argued that the court should hold her responsible for the murders because she had a clear motive for killing the girls, and can remember what happened before and after the incident.
They said Zheng fatally stabbed Wakana Taketomo and Jin Sano, both 5, with a kitchen knife on the morning of Feb. 17, 2006, in her car, after picking them up to take them to school along with her daughter.
The court has ordered a psychiatric evaluation of Zheng and the ruling will be handed down Oct. 16.
Zheng initially told police she had murdered the two girls because her daughter was being alienated by her classmates. However, during pretrial procedures, she changed her story, saying she had not killed them, according to sources.
When one of the prosecutors said Zheng believed her daughter had been shunned by the other children, she spat on the court-room floor.
Her daughter, who witnessed the murder, will be questioned in a closed session of the court.
Zheng came to Japan in 1999 and married a Japanese man. The couple divorced after the murders. Their daughter now lives with her father and grandfather in Shiga Prefecture.
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