crime

23-year-old Ibaraki man arrested for abducting 8-year-old boy for 18 hours

22 Comments

A 23-year-old unemployed man was arrested for abducting a minor early Sunday morning, after he spent roughly 18 hours with an 8-year-old boy until they were found by police, following a call from the boy’s mother.

Police said Atsushi Fukuda approached the boy, who was playing by himself at around 10 a.m. on Saturday near JR Tsuchiura station, and asked him to go and play some games together. His mother called police at around 1 a.m. Sunday morning, after repeated attempts to contact her son on his cell phone. About 20 officers were mobilized to find the boy and they found the Fukuda and the boy on their bicycles near a park about two kilometers from the station at about 4 a.m. Fukuda was charged with abducting a minor. The boy was not injured, police said.

Police said the boy had left his grandmother’s home in Tsuchiura City on his bicycle when Fukuda approached him on Saturday morning. Fukuda told police he just wanted to play games with a child.

© Wire reports

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

22 Comments
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Just another day in "beautiful" Nippon.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I'm just glad he was a bit weird and wanted to play with a kid. At least the kid came back alive so we can't say his intentions were completely sinister. But mom please try to locate your kid before the sun goes down.

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Negligence...plain and simple. See it all the time in Japan.

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No mention of the boy's father in the story... Maybe Fukuda is the kids father? Naaa~! Odds are it's just another weirdo.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

It could be the fukuda had an eight year old mentality and needed a friend his own age. Next time he may innocently confess to playing and killing a friend who accidentally fell into a river

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Couple questions, since the kid was at grandma's house, why didn't the mom call there? It only says she tried calling the kid on his cell phone. Was grandma ever contacted by the cops? There's no mention of that here. Strange story, poor kid must have wondered why he had to hang out with a nutter for so long while mom and grandma apparently abandoned him. The sad thing is both mom and grandma will blame the kid to save face, and he'll get punished in addition to feeling like nobody wants him.

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This Ibraki man is seek and need shrinks to adjust his marbles. As for mother of the child: 'she should be charged for neglect, she certainly took log time to report matter to police.'

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If you look around you'll see a lot of unsupervised kids out and about in Japan.

Once someone has a child convinced it's ok to be with them how can anyone tell by looking at them there is a problem? There is no way.

Unfortunately kids are not sophisticated enough to protect themselves. These predators know all the tricks. The only responsible thing to do is keep an eye on your kids. Period.

Maybe in this case the Grandmother screwed up. But that doesn't change the fact in Japan kids are not watched closely enough. That's my opinion anyway.

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It's easy to see the mother at fault for not acting quicker, but the story doesn't really give us a good idea of what "repeated attempts to contact her son" is. If she was having trouble contacting him for 18 hours, she probably should have made the call much sooner (to the police). But she may have assumed that he was still at his grandmother's house. Maybe the grandmother didn't tell the mother at any point in the day "I'm going to let your 8-year-old son play by himself around the city with no supervision." Did she call the grandmother's house repeatedly? Did she make the trip to grandmother's house to check herself? Did she do her own search for him around places he might be? What times did she "repeatedly" call her son and was the first call just a routine check-in still assuming he was at grandmother's house (which could have occurred fairly late)? Anyway, the story isn't giving us a good idea of what the mother actually did before finally calling the police at 1 am. But we can probably be sure that she didn't just suddenly realize at 12:59 am that he might be missing so she called the police.

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What do some parents think?

Beggars belief quite honestly. I don't even know where to start on this one! He was taken from a JR station at 10am - and no-one spotted the guy approach an 8 year old and ask him to "come play with me"?

I'm assuming the kid must have eaten or drank something during that time - so no-one commented on a guy who was obviosuly not his father going around with him? OK - maybe that one is a little difficult to call on...

...but then an 8 year old out on a bike at 9pm? 10pm? midnight? beyond midnight? I'm assuming this park wasn't in the back-arse of nowhere?

And that's before I even start on the motehr , who unable to locate her son for 14 HOURS including after dark had finally then decided it was a good time to call the police???!

Quite honestly, it is a miracle that kid is still alive, and not far off a miracle he's managed to last this long!

So yeah, as a parent, I would say I'm pretty shocked!

0 ( +0 / -0 )

8 year old and all day the mother didn't think to check until 1am. what the heck. 8 year olds should be in bed by 8.

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An 8 year old boy can play by himself pretty much unsupervised except for a mobile phone and then at 1 am mum thinks its a bit too late for him to be out. Stranger danger should not even be an issue if the kid was better supervised. What do some parents think? When I was 8 I was already tucked into bed no later than 9pm safe and sound so I could wake up and be ready and healthy for the next day.

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timorborder wrote:

It goes deeper than this. It is more a case of naivety on a mass scale.

I think it is more a case of fatalism. What will be will be. I see reckless behavior everyday, not just involving children. For instance, I see old folks sitting on the ground, right on the edge of the road, half in the bushes. They are almost impossible to see with cars speeding by inches away. The lack of caution is shocking at times. I wonder 'how did they live so long?'

As parent I feel I have to go against the grain here just to watch over my kids.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

mother waits 13 hours to call police? boy should be put into care. mother must be insane.

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Don't have an opinion one way or the other about the wider "stranger danger" education issue. In my house my kids were taught from a very young age to ignore advances from anybody they didn't know. When away from home playing down the park, etc., they were also strongly encouraged to always take one of our dogs with them for extra security.

Generally speaking, however, I have to say that I have been shocked by the rather naive attitude of parents and schools in this country to issues of security. The general premise on which peoples' ideas are based seems to be reactive rather than proactive. When S hits the F, how many times have we seen schools apologizing in cases of bullying or kids dying as a result of heatstroke, etc. The excuses usually start, "I didn't think......" And what about the parents? Locally we had a kid knocked off her bike at night. A night that it was snowing and she shouldn't have been out riding with no lights, carrying an umbrella and not wearing a helmet. In other countries despite their loss, the parents would have been down the police station trying to avoide questions regarding child endangerment. Indeed, this isn't just a mentality of "it can't happen to me." It goes deeper than this. It is more a case of naivety on a mass scale.

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There are orphanages in Japan, just look it up. At any rate, there's still no reason to kidnap a child, even if you don't have anyone to play with you. Boo hoo, cue the violins. You're an adult, find someone your own age to "play" with.

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My kids are in school here. I have to disagree with Disillusioned's remarks. In fact I think they over due the warnings at school. My kids come home traumatized by 'staged' attacks at the school.

There is fine line between warning and scaring.

In my opinion it's up to parents to keep a better eye on their kids. We can't expect kids to take care of themselves. They are too easily tricked.

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I'm sure there are orphanages you could volunteer at.

Not in Japan.

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Disillusioned- I couldn't agree more.

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Does everyone else remember what happened in Tsuchiura a few months ago? The little girl who left the hospital where her mother worked to go to her grandmother's house and turned up dead at the hands of another twenty something loon. Kids in Japan have got be taught about 'stranger danger'. They are too trusting and all too often end up dead.

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If you honestly just wanted to play a game with a child, I'm sure there are orphanages you could volunteer at. The lame excuses these criminals come up with never cease to amaze me.

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Police said Atsushi Fukuda approached the boy, who was playing by himself at around 10 a.m. on Saturday near JR Tsuchiura station, and asked him to go and play some games together. His mother called police at around 1 a.m. Sunday morning

Good to see the sense of urgency shown by the mother in this case. If she had been any slower in contacting the police, she might have been identifying her son down the morgue.

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