crime

Woman attacks group of young boys with knife

30 Comments

Police in Higashi-Osaka said Friday that a 44-year-old woman attacked a group of elementary school boys walking home from school, injuring some of them.

According to police, the incident occurred just after 3 p.m. Thursday. The boys were walking home from Tamagawa Elementary School when the woman suddenly approached the group, NTV reported. The woman slashed a 7-year-old boy with a 17-cm-long blade, leaving him with a 3-cm-long gash on the thumb of his right hand.

After slashing the boy, the woman then violently grabbed the arm of another 7-year-old boy and shook him before letting go and running away.

A police officer quickly arrived at the scene and arranged for an ambulance for the first victim. He then found the woman on a street nearby, knocked the knife out of her hands with his baton, and arrested her for possession of an illegal weapon.

Eyewitnesses told police later that the woman appeared to have been following the children - not running after them, but simply walking towards them with an expressionless look on her face.

NTV quoted police as saying that following her arrest, the suspect was incomprehensible. Police said the woman has been placed in the care of a psychiatric hospital for further evaluation.

© Japan Today

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30 Comments
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Scary sounding woman, but kudos to the super cop. Getting an ambulance for the kid, tracking down the woman and disarming her with his baton. Nice work!

18 ( +18 / -0 )

i actually have a similar extendable steel baton as what the J cops carry. it doesnt look much but when extended it is actually very heavy. could easily KO even the biggest of guys

0 ( +4 / -4 )

Different day, different nutcase. 17 cm long blade!!! Shiat, glad she wasn't able to do more damage.

6 ( +7 / -1 )

"the woman has been placed in the care of a psychiatric hospital for further evaluation."

Good thing they are making use of the much needed psychiatric hospitals.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Holy smoke! I guess this woman is one of the 27% of Japanese adults that have some sort of mental illness. That's nearly one in three people! This is also another cowardly attack on the defenceless. She'll get a psychic evaluation, a box of Serapax and Mogadon and sent home to wallow in her drug induced depression. That's mental health care Japan style!

6 ( +11 / -5 )

Interesting you noted that 27% of Japanese adults that have some sort of mental illness. "That's nearly one in three people! " Research also suggest that "Taijin Kyofusho" is also a problem. ref: http://listverse.com/2013/05/06/10-more-bizarre-psychological-disorders/

0 ( +3 / -3 )

27% is closer to 1/4 vs 33% which is a third.

Not surprised at that figure pretty common for a modern.,civilised country. At least in Japan you don't get drugged out of your skull for anything.

Meds for minors is still very low.

3 ( +6 / -3 )

Crazy #139 of the year.

Good to know there are many like this loon around. Mental illness stigma, anyone?

2 ( +4 / -2 )

so wait hold up. He arrested her for possession of an illegal weapon - not for stabbing children? all's good in tha hood, brah.

1 ( +3 / -2 )

wowyz,

Brilliant, thanks for that link! I have searched for a term for "Taijin Kyofusho" for a looong time. Now I am enlightened. That "illness" is so common in Japan

1 ( +3 / -2 )

i don't want to think about what will happen if Japanese will ever have access to guns.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

so wait hold up. He arrested her for possession of an illegal weapon - not for stabbing children?

Usually with situations like this, they charge them with something simple in order to get them off the street while they put together a case against the more serious crime, which they are then charged with before they get out of holding for the initial crime they were charged with.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

What is this happening in Japan ? Men , women and children are all mentally agitated in the country and resorting to crime. It is high time Japanese government must initiate social reforms on urgent basis to restore peace and tranquility in the minds of its people.

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

this woman was totally out of her mind, and a good night in paradise would have done wonders.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

it"s ME: "At least in Japan you don't get drugged out of your skull for anything."

You just get an incredibly high suicide rate, and sadly those people often take others with them. In any case, it's good that she didn't do more damage with such a big knife, and I hope the kid that was attacked recovers with no serious problems. Just goes to show there are nutbags everywhere, and of both genders!

-7 ( +3 / -10 )

Taijin Kyofushu is a combination of agoraphobia and depression, which leads to a false reality mental state known in the west as, cronic schizophrenia brought on by paranoid delusions. Have you ever wondered why manga and coley were so popular in Japan? Now you know why!

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

Social anxiety disorder does seem extraordinarily prevalent here. The number of people I meet who start twitching and getting upper lip sweat just from attempting a simple conversation is astounding.

2 ( +5 / -3 )

Glad she didnt kill any one of those boys. What a sick lady.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

DisillusionedJan. 30, 2015 - 05:14PM JST

Holy smoke! I guess this woman is one of the 27% of Japanese adults that have some sort of mental illness. That's nearly one in three people!

Disillusioned: it'SME already mentioned it, but 27% is closer to 1 in 4, not 1 in 3. And btw, 1 in 4 is the same as the US, and just a little worse than Australia at 1 in 5. I agree that Japan has issues with mental illness and treatment, but so do most developed countries, but you always seem to bring this up whenever a nutbar like this makes the news... thanks for the heads up, but we get it already.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Even the women in Japan can be violent nutters! Here's hoping the prison time is nice and long like it would be for a man.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

scipantheistJan. 31, 2015 - 12:45AM JST

Even the women in Japan can be violent nutters!

...of course they can, why the surprise?

1 ( +4 / -3 )

I always tend to think foreigners' (or at least Americans') sense that there are more nutters here is due to the fact that we're essentially reading a national newspaper. In the US, at the least, if some woman did the above crime in Boston or San Jose, it would hardly appear in either local market's news (print or media). Sadly, she would have to do far more to get such coverage. Even in a big state like California, what goes down in the Bay Area is rarely reported in say San Diego, unless it's particularly heinous.

So, while Japan is a far cry from America's 300+ million people or vast size, we are still reading about virtually every loon from Shiretoko to Okinawa--it give s a false perception of reality.

4 ( +6 / -2 )

Wonder if the attack could have been the result of the woman being pestered, harassed, teased, etc., by those or some other kids?

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

jcapan - you're entirely correct. So many people think that the number of news stories they read on a subject is an accurate reflection of the real state of events in Japan, which is a major failure in logic. How many times have we read "what is happening in Japan, why are parents killing children, why are children killing parents, why are there so many nutters, why is Saitama so messed up"? There is no way to judge any of these things without actual statistical numbers. The number of stories on an online site is in now way directly proportional to the actual amount of crime that exists. Some people have an inability to understand that logic though. They get caught up in their emotional response, and don't bother with a logical one.

2 ( +4 / -2 )

@ToshiYori Why are you trying to come up with an excuse for her actions? Would you excuse a 44 year old man who slashed a 7 year old girl?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

strangerland: It's been pointed out, using statistics, that 27% of the population suffer some kind of social disorder, and given that the population of the nation is roughly 130 million, that's nearly 35 million people -- a pretty big number, wouldn't you say? Now, needless to say that many people are not going out and slashing others like this woman and soooo many others (and sorry, but "toorima" is a Japanese word that has no equivalent in English, for a reason, same with hikkikomori, etc.), but there are also people taking the example of this woman as an example of a larger societal problem -- the mental problems and lack of help in dealing with them (and stigma), as well as the attacks that such things lead to.

-5 ( +1 / -6 )

It's been pointed out, using statistics, that 27% of the population suffer some kind of social disorder

It's been said, I haven't seen anything to actually justify this number. I also haven't seen any numbers for other countries to see if the number is larger or smaller.

And it doesn't change the fact that so many posters here take the number of stories they read here as proof of whatever it is they want it to be proof of. Extremely illogical.

0 ( +4 / -4 )

@scipantheist: Why are you trying to come up with an excuse for her actions? Would you excuse a 44 year old man who slashed a 7 year old girl?

Sorry for not clearly stating my comment. I was not trying to make an excuse for her actions. I was simply trying to suggest that some earlier incident(s) may have caused her to attack those kids. I know from personal experience that kids can do things that can sometime cause grown-ups to do things they may regret. Long ago, I was with a group of boys who thought it was great fun to throw rocks onto the tin roof of an old man's house. After warning us several times, he finally got fed up and took a couple of shotgun blasts at us one night. Thankfully, he missed both times. Needless to say, I never threw at or even went near his house again. To this day, I still think about and regret being involved in those rock-throwing incidents. And, now that I'm an old man, I certainly wouldn't want kids to harass me. (However, I wouldn't slash or otherwise harm them, if they did.)

2 ( +2 / -0 )

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