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A former gang boss who was sentenced to death over a rampage in which a rival gangster and three customers were killed at a bar in Maebashi, Gunma Prefecture, in January 2003, was found dead in his prison cell in Tokyo on Sunday morning. He was 71.
Police said Osamu Yano, the former head of a group affiliated with the Sumiyoshikai crime syndicate, was found bleeding from cuts to his neck which are believed to have been self-inflicted.
In the 2003 case, two of Yano’s underlings, acting on his orders, shot up a bar on Jan 25, killing three unrelated customers and seriously injuring another customer and the 60-year-old former boss of a rival group. They then fatally shot a bodyguard of the former boss outside the bar.
Yano's death sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2014.
Yano was also convicted of murdering a business owner in 1996 and another man in 1998.
12 Comments
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moonbloom
More yakuza wonderfullness.
Hopefully some of his associates will learn a lesson or two from his untimely end, and refrain from emulating him.
Chip Star
Sounds like you hope other yaks don’t kill themselves.
oldman_13
He didn't commit the murders, why was he sentenced to death?
macv
there are plenty of reports about how inhumane prisons and sadistic guards are in Japan - death row inmates never know when they are to be executed, for slight infractions can have hands shacked to their waist and forced to eat off plate on the floor like snakes, really horrible stuff, at least they don't have the violence drugs insanity of US prisons
kurisupisu
Didn’t he get his fingernails cut before being placed in the cell?
Fighto!
No loss.
Fighto!
The people I feel sorry for are the families of the innocent victims of this monster. RIP to them.
Chip Star
You’d have to ask the lawmakers of the country you love so much.
Yubaru
If you gotta ask this question HERE.....wait, forget it, aint worth the effort!
moonbloom
Sounds like you hope other yaks don’t kill themselves.
Was referring to his choice of living a pointless futile life of crime, one in which he was involved in killing other people.