Police in Niigata City, Niigata Prefecture, are investigating the deaths of an 80-year-old woman and her 53-year-old son whose bodies were found in the bathtub of their home on Thursday.
Police suspect the deaths of Keiko Sakai and her eldest son, Hidekazu, who lived with her, may have been a murder-suicide, Sankei Shimbun reported. An autopsy revealed that both died of drowning. Police did not say if there were external signs of injury on either body.
The house was locked and there were no signs of anyone having broken in.
A relative who visited the house called 110 at around 6:35 p.m. on Thursday and said no one had answered the door or the phone. Police went to the house and found the bodies.
According to police, the relative who called 110 had visited the home on Wednesday and met with the mother and son, and said everything seemed normal.
A neighbor told local media, “Whenever we met, the mother would often chat, but I rarely saw her son."
© Japan Today
4 Comments
Login to comment
Speed
Oh, god. I'm assuming the son instigated the murder-suicide but the article doesn't make it clear. If so, poor old lady if she still wanted to keep on going.
starpunk
SAD.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Jeez. I would have hoped the 53 year old would have been in good enough health to continue on but who knows? Also that must have been a heck of a bathtub to drown two adults.
tigerjane
If his mother had dementia, he is single and trying to work and care for her single handedly, impossible.
The Japanese government is doing little to nothing to aide small families in these situations. I am not condoning what happen, however, the government raises health care premiums for elderly people by almost double when they reach the age of 70 to about 40-thousand-yen, homecare assistance is getting harder to find because of the number of elderly that are in dire need.
The government needs to stop aiding other countries, financially, and start using the money taxpayers provide each year for the people of Japan.