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Boy, 18, held over Kichijoji murder

Kyodo

An 18-year-old youth was arrested Sunday on suspicion of killing and robbing a woman in Tokyo’s Kichijoji district last week with a Romanian accomplice, police said.

After turning himself in around 11 p.m. Saturday night, the youth, who is Japanese and has no fixed address, admitted to murdering Arisa Yamada, 22, early Thursday morning and stealing her bag and purse. He was quoted as telling investigators: “I stabbed her. I wanted money.”

The youth told investigators that he disposed of two kitchen knives believed to be the murder weapons at a vacant lot while he was on the run. Police have also confiscated what appears to be the victim’s purse and notebook at the home of a friend the youth was staying with in Hino, western Tokyo.

The suspect, who had run away from home prior to Yamada’s murder, told police that he fled to a nearby station after stabbing her, got on a train and traveled to Hino Station early Thursday. He had been holed up at his friend’s residence since then.

The other suspect, a 17-year-old Romanian national, was arrested on the day of the incident and has also admitted to killing Yamada, according to the police. Their names have been withheld because both are minors.

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  • tuta158

    I don’t understand something, they can stole her bag and purse without killing her, so why they kil her or it was some accident during they sotol her bag.

    • Sariah Cabell

      I think they did not mean to kill her she just bled to death after being stabbed twice.

      • AmIJustAPessimistOrWhat?

        The same previous article said the two had been seen together often in the local video arcade. I wonder if too many hours of of killing people in video games desensitized them to the cruelty of stabbing someone. I am inclined to believe so.

      • DA

        You are more than a pessimist. That statement is just ridiculous. If true, about 90% of all people born after 1980 would be mass murderers by now…

      • AmIJustAPessimistOrWhat?

        I think there is a distribution and only 6 sigma will actually manifest this antisocial behavior. To be exact, I find it plausible that without video games they would have been in the very small minority (in Japan) of youths who would attempt purse snatching. But because they had been inundated with images of killing, they felt nothing odd about stabbing her at the same time; to them it was all part of the game.

  • Danny

    in a different article, it was quoted that they just stabbed her, without even giving her a warning. It’s really sad that a young life were lost because of something so small and foolish. these two young ones with nothing to do, took the innocent life of another, who had goals in life.