An 89-year-old former top bureaucrat pleaded not guilty Thursday over a 2019 car crash in which a woman and her young daughter were killed in an incident that stirred debate about the increasing number of older drivers on Japanese roads and the dangers they pose.
"I remember I did not keep pressing on the accelerator. The car had some issues and was out of control," said Kozo Iizuka, a former chief of the now-defunct Agency of Industrial Science and Technology under the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, in the first hearing of his trial at the Tokyo District Court.
Iizuka's negligence charge comes from the accusation he ran a red light after mistaking the gas pedal for the brake, hitting and killing the bicycle-riding Mana Matsunaga, 31, and her 3-year-old daughter Riko when his vehicle entered a crosswalk in Tokyo's busy Ikebukuro district on April 19, 2019.