Word: takuma
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...EXECUTED. MAMORU TAKUMA, 40; convicted last year of fatally stabbing eight schoolchildren in 2001; in Osaka. Takuma, who had a history of mental illness, went on a rampage at Ikeda Elementary School, attacking students and teachers in several classrooms. Unrepentant, he told the court he could have killed more children if he had targeted a nursery school instead...
...SENTENCED. Mamoru Takuma, 39, to death by hanging for murdering eight schoolchildren and stabbing 13 students and two teachers in June 2001; in Osaka. Takuma's rampage, which he said was prompted by a hatred for his father and ex-wife, was Japan's worst ever school killing...
...Could the chilling note have been written by Mamoru Takuma, the 37-year-old man police say confessed to the knifings? Ikeda Elementary School, where 21 second-graders were stabbed, is affiliated with an Osaka university. Other evidence suggests Takuma, a drifter with a history of psychological problems, harbored resentment against the school. His father, long estranged from his son, told Japanese newspapers that Takuma once took, and failed, an exam there. Takuma was also accused, in 1999, of poisoning four teachers at another school by spiking water for tea with drugs. Osaka police refused to comment on the bulletin...
...Judging by comments he made to police, "stress" had overwhelmed Takuma again. "I want to die," police said he told them after they carted him away. "If I killed children, I knew I would get the death penalty." According to police, Takuma said he had taken an overdose of tranquilizers before going on the knifing spree. No one really knows what twisted logic motivated Takuma, although Takuma's father told Japanese newspapers that his son once did poorly on a test at the Ikeda school. But armchair psychologists are already diagnosing the case. "The noises children make sound good...
...Japan's schoolchildren, teachers and parents with long-term emotional scars? Until last week, Japanese schools, including the one in Ikeda, were typically open and easy to enter. During school hours, gates and doors are left unlocked. There are no security guards posted. So it was no trouble for Takuma to drive his silver sedan into the school's parking lot, pull a knife out of a box sitting on the front seat, walk around behind the school building and quietly enter a classroom through a ground-floor window. "We always felt safe here," says Yamao, pointing to the wooded...