crime

77-year-old man arrested for trying to set fire to mayor’s house in Hokkaido town

7 Comments

Police in Suttsu town, Hokkaido, have arrested a 77-year-old man on suspicion of arson and property destruction after he tried to set fire to the mayor’s house last week.

Police said Toshio Higashida hurled a burning object through a first-floor window of the house of Mayor Haruo Kataoka at around 1:20 a.m. on Oct 8, local media reported. The fire singed the window but was quickly extinguished by Kataoka before it could spread. Remnants of a bottle were found in the room where the object fell. Police believe the object was a crude Molotov cocktail.

Suttsu has a population of 2,900. It is one of two towns on the northern coast of Hokkaido which have applied for preliminary research into their land to gauge its suitability for hosting a deep-underground disposal site for high-level radioactive nuclear waste in exchange for at least 2 billion yen in subsidies, Kyodo News reported.

According to police, Higashida has admitted to the charge and quoted him as saying he was protesting the mayor’s decision to over the radioactive waste storage issue.

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7 Comments
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It's hard for one person to stop an elected official doing something they are against. Arson is not the way.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Toshio Higashida hurled a burning object through a first-floor window of the house of Mayor Haruo Kataoka

All this because.......

Higashida has admitted to the charge and quoted him as saying he was protesting the mayor’s decision to over the radioactive waste storage issue.

What was his endgame? Hoping that the stupid act would kill him? And then what?

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Suspended sentence.....

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

I’m a pacifist and hate violence. The mayor is proposing violence against generations of children. Alpha radionuclides (Plutonium etc) have half lives of 1000 years. That means on one of Japan’s most earthquake prone areas, constant maintaining sites every year. That is just half life. Exposure to alpha emitting radiation constantly destroys the body cells by cell eventually leading to death.

so kill hundreds of generations of children or burn a house, which is basically a bunch of arranged wood?

Some may think he is a hero.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

I would have let his tires down. Less chance of harm.

Still, who would want radioactive waste on their own doorstep?

0 ( +0 / -0 )

I can't believe local governments are actually requesting nuclear waste sites for their towns. Insanity.

Regardless, Higashida's violence was wrong, and should be punished severely.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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