Friday February 17, 2012

Bar employee found strangled to death in Shizuoka apartment

SHIZUOKA —

Emergency services received a call just after 1 a.m. Wednesday morning after a 36-year-old woman was found dead in her Hamamatsu City apartment by her sister and mother, police said.

Akemi Sugiura, a 36-year-old employee at a bar, had strangulation marks on her neck. She was found lying on her back beside her bed, and there were no signs of a struggle in the room or on her clothes, police said.

Sugiura’s mother received a call from Sugiura’s 5-year-old daughter’s kindergarten at around 2.30 p.m. Tuesday, saying that Sugiura had not come to pick her up. She and Sugiura’s younger sister later thought it strange that they were not able to contact Sugiura, and decided to visit her apartment. Sugiura’s sister told police that she had spoken with her on the phone at 11 a.m. and that there was nothing unusual about the conversation.

Police said Sugiura lived by herself in the fifth-floor apartment, and the building had an auto-lock security system. Her daughter lives with Sugiura’s mother, and Sugiura would pick up her daughter from kindergarten and take her to her mother’s place before going to work at the bar. 

Wire reports

  • 0

    ninjohitokiri

    BARS AND CRIME. HO HUM.

  • 0

    ratpack

    Feel real sad for the little 5 year old daughter. How do you explain a situation like this to her??

  • 0

    ninjohitokiri

    bars and crime. its a sad situation.

  • 0

    seesaw

    The Grand daughter reported to the Grandma at 2.30 pm, and she found her strangled body at 1 am and reported to the Police. What happened in between those hours? A concerned Mother would have checked on her daughter all over the place.....seems strange to me that she didn't.

  • 0

    jason6

    seesaw: the mother usually picked her daughter up, took her to grandma's house house, then goes to work. they must have assumed she forgot to pick her daughter up. you don't immediately assume somebody is murdered when they miss an appointment, do you?

  • 0

    Disillusioned

    If she lives in a secured apartment they surely have security cameras. It shouldn't take the key-stones long to figure this one out, hopefully.

    • Is the fact she was a bar worker relevant?
  • 0

    seesaw

    they must have assumed she forgot to pick her daughter up. you don't immediately assume somebody is murdered when they miss an appointment, do you?

    Jason6: But, this is not an appointment, it's an obligation. If you are a parent, would you purposely forget to pick up your daughter from school?..:)

  • 0

    dolphingirl

    seesaw: I agree. You would think that alarm bells would have gone off when they realized that she hadn't picked up her daugher from school. Well, it may have been to late anyway but still...

  • 0

    seesaw

    dolphingirl: thanks. Let's hope the Police find the culprit(s) soon..sad news.

  • 0

    nevarezga

    JHansen, I was thinking about the same, some of us started reading japantoday.com and after a few days realized that there were murder news almost every day, and then we say "what the.." because it's something we didn't expect to be so common in a country like Japan. THe truth is that these things happen everywhere. Like you said, these things of news are so common in my city that they stopped publishing murder news on front pages long time ago, and sometimes the event is not worth the space in the paper.

Login to leave a comment

OR

Follow us

More in Crime

View all

View all