Police arrested a 42-year-old Chinese man Sunday in connection with a hit-and-run incident in Saitama Prefecture that injured several schoolchildren last week.
The suspect, Deng Hongpeng, has admitted that his vehicle hit the children, but claimed that he left the scene because they said they were all right, according to police sources.
Deng, a resident of Misato, Saitama Prefecture, had turned himself in to police earlier in the day. Authorities questioned him as he closely resembled the driver recorded on the dashcam of another vehicle that happened to pass by the scene of the incident, according to an NHK report.
Police are conducting further investigations regarding his motives as well as his whereabouts since the incident, the report said.
On Wednesday, the sport-utility vehicle plowed into a group of about 10 elementary school students walking home from school in Misato, injuring four sixth-grade boys before fleeing the scene.
The vehicle was later found and seized in a residential parking lot about 2 kilometers from the scene, but the driver was nowhere to be found. Police had been searching for the suspect, treating it as a hit-and-run case.
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