Four youths arrested for beating student unconscious

We don't know the whole story. Maybe the boy was a pr$%k!

“We’re all really shocked. We had no idea there was any trouble brewing among the boys.”

No surprises there. Four on one sounds about right for Japan.

Shocking and sick. No one saw this while it happened for 1 hour?

The lad is in a coma god rest his soul to pull thru. Meanwhile the primitive tribe mentality gang may get off... However very rare here regarding a beatdown for an hour and Japan has gotta drop these juvie ages and start pinning attempted murder charges. Its sure been a good start this year with kids and teens getting killed in the safest country on Earth...

So they visited his home at 9:40pm on a sunday evening and then went about beating him for 1 hour....great neighbours in that neck of the woods??? Where were his family??? Also I agree with Disillusioned.

hope these kids get "put down" quickly...these cases just make me sick...dispose of this trash immediately!

I pray for this boy and his family...

The boys are accused of beating the boy for over one hour on Sunday evening between 9:40 and 10:45 p.m.

That is insane... Beating someone for that long is crazy!

Note to JT. In the title..."arrested for beating student unconscious" sounds better, less awkward.

Moderator: Fair enough. Thanks.

So I guess lots of people in the neighborhood just ignored it and pretended it wasn't happening

They beat this kid outside his own house for an hour, and the parents didn't think anything was wrong?

This didn't happen at three in the morning, most people would have still been awake. Surely somebody saw this happening, and didn't do anything.

Horrible. If I was this kid, I'd be motivated to recover just to give a beat down to my neighbors for not watching my back.

Animals

Agree with others... where the hell was the family/neighbors??? This kid needed that guy who saved the drunk girl from being run over by a train. Poor kid. Sick bastards.

And on the same day that the other chap saved the women from the train tracks. Where do you start?

What an absolutely atrocious act, 4 onto 1. If the victim dies as a result of this, these "kids" should be sent down for life. Even if the victim recovers, each and every boy who attacked him should go down for 10 years, hard labor.

And now we turn to the neighbors? Talk about gutless. Filling somebody in like this would make a hell of racket, the question is why didn't somebody intervene? Indeed, the cops might consider some charges for the neighbors. What about accessory after the fact? What an absolute disgrace!!!! (this one has really raised my blood pressure)

These animals will walk away scott-free as it is. No conviction no nothing. I wonder what my dear friends YuriOtani and NihonRyu would say about such atrocity. My prayers go to the victim and his family. Hang in there, young man.

Is this a high school or Junior high school? The age would make it Junior High i think.

I notice here in Japan that alot of people tend to look away when somebody needs help. They just rather not get involved. The guy who saved the lady at the train station is a perfect example of how more Japanese citizens need to step up to the plate. So many people and lives, children too, would be saved if more Japanese got involved.

@maxjapank- This is Junior High School... they're are my students o_O

Stories like this me sick. Why do these things happen in the first place? It's mind boggling. When the world didn't have the internet it was a safer place (not really). Since the internet, the world seems to have gotten worse every day. Those boys should be held responsible for their action and be charged as adults.

yokoso japan: the bully culture

Horrible. As others have already mentioned, it sounds like this poor kid was being beaten just outside his home so why the heck didn't anyone come to his rescue?!!

And I kinda doubt that this was the first act of violence for the 'gang' that did this. Boys don't become this brutal overnight. Schools and parents have to be more aware of what their kids are into and put a stop to bullying as soon as it happens.

I hope this boy can recover.

after seeing this was in toyooka, i'm not surprised at all.

I would love to beat the hell out of some of my students (that being the bully types who pick on other students). Unfortunaletly some nasty little punks out there.

I pray he will recover, and those boys are given their due.

Jail or no?

beating the boy for over one hour

!! such aggression !

Thats a long Time beating him..i mean i would get exhausted beating someone for 1 straight hour lol. and the three were friends since elementary school? WHY IN HELL would they start beating their friend? Crazy people >.>

Over the years this kind of thing has been fairly common in Japan. They call it lynching. Usually to do with some kid wanting to leave the group, or having a bad attitude. There was a long spate of serious attacks and killings of the homeless by gangs of High School or Junior High School students too, I remember.

Not been in the news so much recently, though. A good thing!

And nobody noticed this going on for an hour....................sad.

"Police arrested four youths in Toyooka City, Hyogo Prefecture, on Monday after they severely beat a fellow student at their public high school."

Note to JT- It should be public junior high school or public middle school.

We had no idea there was any trouble brewing among the boys

Listen to what your students are saying instead of lecturing them all the time

I always wonder about groups like this. Individually they're little cowards. Its only when they get 3 or 4 friends to help them, that they find the balls to do something.

I suspect that if the kid wakes up, with no real impairment, they'll get a slap on the wrist, get told they're bad boys, and sent home. If the kid dies, things get a bit more serious. Not a lot since they're kids, and they never really punish kids, but slightly more serious anyway.

Note to self: If a gang of 4 guys, that I know have issues with me, shows up at my house late at night, do not accept their invitation to "step outside" unless I am packing heat.

Just little boys trying to muscle their young power on their friend. In future they will becvome a gang if they aren't severly punished today. Lock them up for few month with hard criminals and than send them back to school under strong supervision. They have a chance to reform.

After the attack, the boy wouldn’t get up, and one of the attackers phoned the boy’s older brother, who together with his mother called authorities.

They expected him to be fine and dandy after getting beat on for an hour? Jesus...

Hopefully the kid will be ok.

heard a thing once... the Japanese lack compassion by nature.

"I would get exhausted beating someone for 1 straight hour"

Not if you took turns with three others.

When I hear about stuff like this where 4 cowards gang up on one person, I get pretty steamed. Each of those 4 should have the living daylights kicked out of them by 4 family members or friends of the victim.

These kids need a good ass whooping from thier parents

I suppose I have to bring up the old chestnut: what were these kids doing roaming the streets at that hour anyway? I know that 14-15 year olds aren't exactly babies, but that's still a late hour to be out in the streets without some kind of supervision or parental oversight, even if it's just a phone call every hour or so to say, "I'm at the arcade," or "We're going to the movies."

They beat this poor boy for an hour and NOBODY saw anything? Heard anything? I'm not familiar with the area, but it doesn't sound like they dragged him into an alley or old warehouse; somewhere they could be out of sight and ear shot.

I don't know what could possess these boys to do this to their long-time friend. It reminds me in many ways of the story of the teenage boy in Florida (USA) who was doused in rubbing alcohol and set on fire by three other boys, at least two of whom he'd been friends with since they were kids; all because of a $40 videogame.

The fact that the boys in THIS incident called the older brother first instead of an emergency number tells me that they realized the wrongness of their actions and didn't want to get in trouble. They called the closest thing to a peer they could find. Who knows what that kind of delay might have meant for the victim's health? What did they think was going to happen? Did they think they could beat the boy senseless for an hour without consequences? I doubt they'll get worse than a slap on the wrist from the justice system, but I hope the shame of their actions follows them for many years to come.

Note to JT:

Police arrested four youths in Toyooka City, Hyogo Prefecture, on Monday after they severely beat a fellow student at their public high school.

You dangled your participle here. Unless the victim lives at his school, he was severely beaten "outside his house", not "at their public high school".

Yes, I know you were trying to convey that the perpetrators and victim attended the same school, but even that is not true considering one of the perpetrators "belonged to a different middle school" - implying that at least one other student belonged to a middle school as well.

They viciously beat him for 1 hour! What disgusting thugs. I hope they get life in prison!

If those devils beat my child viciously for 1 hour I'd put each of them in the hospital!

Laws and political correctness do not change human nature. There is a vicious, sadistic streak in Japanese schoolboys, just as there is in American schoolboys, French, Spanish ... and god save us from the British.

Rather than pretend otherwise, acknowledge the truth and be prepared to recognize dangerous bullying when it's going on and intervene before there is serious injury.

awesome comment glycol57.

Perhaps a case of vigilanties gone wild? Just cause the whoppee got his butt whooped so badly we assume he was innocent......Whatever the case, I bet he is more carefull about what insults he yells at people on the street next time.

Lord of the flies

I'm certainly glad one of the boys had the sense to call the victim's brother.

This isn't vigilanteeism; this is school bullying at its cruelest.

IMHO there's more here than just three friends, there's a fourth student from a different middle school.

Could it be rather than talking to his best friends alone from the fourth, he resorted to shouting insults at them to vent frustration at possibly being estranged or feeling jealous of the other student? Yes, I know this is speculation, but it may fit the circumstances.

It's unknown if the fourth boy might have suggested the beating.

However, that no one who might have heard the beating wished to get involved shows how easy it is for four boys to evolve into a "gang".

I fully agree with BBleo. Unless they r severely punished at this stage, they will become a gang and start terrorizing the whole neighboorhood. A few rotten apples spoil the bunch. I saw acts of this nature with my own eyes among street gangs in the States. Before u kow it, the few rotten apples will instill fear among the good 99% of the students resulting in good schoolchildren not attending school for fear of their own safety. Kids who act in this manner know exactly whaat they r doing and how the system works. An approach like, "Oh they r juveniles so lets go easy on them" will further exacerbate the problem. Teens who engage in this type of activity will have only two paths when they reach the age of 20, in Japan and 18 in the States.The crafty ones will realize that if I am tried as an adult, I will really do some hard time. The nuthead teens will have only one other pathway to tread...namely become an Organized Crime Member. Those kids know exactly what they can get away with and what they cannot get away with. Don't let sociologists get in the way by their munbo jumbo logic. They just want to justify themselves.