Man gets life in prison for Tokyo's Hachioji Station stabbing spree

Man gets life in prison for Tokyo's Hachioji Station stabbing spree

Oct 14 09:40 PM US/Eastern

TACHIKAWA, Japan, Oct. 15 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The Tokyo District Court's Tachikawa branch sentenced a man Thursday to life in prison for a stabbing spree in July last year at the Keio Line's Hachioji Station building in western Tokyo, killing a woman and seriously injuring another.

Shoichi Kanno, a 34-year-old company employee, has pleaded guilty to the murder and attempted murder charges.

A psychological evaluation has found that he has an intellectual disability but that his ability to tell right from wrong has been maintained to a certain extent.

Prosecutors have demanded he receive a life sentence, saying Kanno was mentally competent.

Kanno is charged with fatally stabbing Mana Saiki, 22, a part-time bookstore worker, with a kitchen knife and seriously injuring a 21- year-old female customer of a bookshop in the building on July 22, 2008.

The prosecutors have said that Kanno aimed to disturb his parents by mimicking a previous rampage in the Akihabara electronics district in Tokyo.

In the June 8 Akihabara rampage, a man drove a truck into a crowd and stabbed people indiscriminately, killing seven and injuring 10 others.