By DPA,
Tokyo : A random stabbing spree that took place in Tokyo Sunday may have been warned about on a mobile-phone bulletin board, media reports said Monday.
The Metropolitan Police Department was investigating messages that showed contemplated killing in Tokyo’s electronics’ centre of Akihabara Sunday afternoon.
Tomohiro Kato, 25, hit three people with a two-ton truck Sunday before he stabbed seven people to death and injured 10 others.
Police arrested Kato on the scene, who said he was “tired of life.”
The first message posted at the site at 5:21 am (2000 GMT) said, “I will kill people in Akihabara, have a vehicle crash and, if the vehicle becomes useless, I will use a knife.”
The next one read, “Getting caught in the middle of the way will perhaps be the most-wretched pattern.”
The message at 6:31 am said, “It’s time. I’m going.”
Kato told a rent-a-car staff that he needed the truck to help three people move and drove into Tokyo, media reports said. He lived in Shizuoka province, west of Tokyo, where he worked at a car-parts assembly factory.
“It’s time,” the last message read at 12:10 am. Some 20 minutes later Kato drove the truck into the streets of Akihabara, where they were blocked off for pedestrians, and started stabbing shoppers.
The killing in a broad daylight in crowded Tokyo shocked Japan Sunday, where it is known for its public safety.
Friends and families of victims as well as passersby continued to visit the crime scene on Monday, leaving flowers, juice and other memorabilia on the crime scene.
“I can’t believe something like this happens in a broad daylight,” the father of 19-year-old Takahiro Kawaguchi was quoted as saying. “I could never forgive (a man who did it).”
A businessman who came to leave a bouquet of flowers at the scene told Japanese media that he might well have been a victim, because he walks past the area often.