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A 67-year-old man has been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for starting a fire in Shinjuku’s Golden-gai district in Tokyo in April last year.
The Tokyo District Court on Thursday convicted Hiroshi Haruna, who was homeless at the time, Fuji TV reported. Haruna, who was arrested for trespassing and arson, told the court that he was in the building at the time but did not start the fire.
Prosecutors said that Haruna had no money on him when he was found and argued that he entered the building looking for money or other valuables.
Prosecutors said surveillance camera footage showed a suspicious man going into the building at 1:18 p.m. on April 12, 2016. He stayed for about five minutes. The fire started at around 1:30 p.m. As the clothes of the man in the video footage resembled what Haruna was wearing when he was questioned by police near the scene after the fire, police searched for him again and found him in Shinjuku Ward the next morning. When he was found, he was lying down on the ground drunk and also had injured his head.
The fire gutted three buildings in the famous bar district, injuring two people.
© Japan Today
3 Comments
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Goodlucktoyou
dna, fingerprints, traces of incindertries? i hope it is not true he did some bad thing. near my house there was a serial arsonist. always at night. it is sad crime as old people in wooden houses can't escape fire and smoke.
smithinjapan
And in unrelated news, a group of yakuza construction and sub-contractors, who had coincidentally been pushing owners of the area to leave so they could use the area for prime real estate, were just awarded a huge contract to develop the area that burned down. :)
Cosmos1
a drunk homeless 67 year old wearing clothing resembling the same as all the other homeless dudes in the Golden-gai area would welcome a little time off the patch .