A five-year prison term was finalized Friday for a 90-year-old former top bureaucrat over a fatal 2019 Tokyo car accident, bringing a close to a high-profile case that stirred debate about the place of elderly drivers on Japanese roads.
Neither the defense counsel of Kozo Iizuka, a former chief of the now-defunct Agency of Industrial Science and Technology, nor prosecutors appealed the Sept. 2 ruling by the Tokyo District Court by the Friday deadline.
The court ruled that Iizuka ran a red light after mistaking the gas pedal for the brake, hitting and killing Mana Matsunaga, 31, and her 3-year-old daughter Riko who were cycling through a crosswalk in Tokyo's Ikebukuro area on April 19, 2019. Nine others were injured in the incident.