A court sentenced a 25-year-old man to death on Thursday for killing three elderly residents at a nursing home where he was working in Kawasaki, near Tokyo, in 2014.

The Yokohama District Court found Hayato Imai guilty of murdering Tamio Ushizawa, 87, Chieko Nakagawa, 86, and Nobuko Asami, 96, by throwing them off balconies at the facility in the city in Kanagawa Prefecture.

Imai had pleaded not guilty, saying he had made false statements to escape police pressure during interrogations, but Presiding Judge Hidetaka Watanabe said that his initial confession was "highly credible" as well as that "there was no leading by police officers and the explanations were rational."