crime

Police arrest mother for strangling 11-year-old son in Yokosuka

31 Comments

A 11-year-old boy was found strangled in his apartment in Yokosuka City, Kanagawa Prefecture, on Monday morning. Police said they have arrested his 40-year-old mother on suspicion of killing her son.

According to police, Hiroki Takanashi was found dead on his bed by his grandmother who lives near the apartment around 6:45 a.m. after the boy's mother had called her to say she had killed him. The victim lived in the apartment together with his mother and father but the father had gone fishing at the time, according to police.

Police quoted the mother as saying she killed her son because she was stressed out.

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31 Comments
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What else could I say? There is an epidemic of child killing here in Japan! I'm just glad it didn't happen in Saitama...

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I like how crime here seems to have a trend. One guy goes apesh*t and stabs someone with a knife, and in the next month you have 5 or more of the same kind of crime, with the same excuse from the criminal. Now one mother who can't find help or ways to deal with her own problems decides to take it out on her own innocent child, and other mothers are going "hey, that's a good idea! If you can't raise them, just strangle them!"

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Sounds like an interesting premise for a survey....

Q1: When feeling stressed, what sort of activities do you engage in? From the following, please choose all that apply. (MULTIPLE ANSWER)

a) Strangle the children b) Beat the wife c) Get drunk and offensive

Seriously, in this society with all its bottled up frustration, I am surprised that this sort of thing does not happen more often. Then again, the excuse given is usually "I intended to kill myself as well, but...." What a load of dog do. Killing innocent kiddies is about the worse thing there is. When this comes to trial, I hope the court takes this woman's stress firmly into consideration, and then sentences her to life in prison!

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Not again!

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Again! Can you believe that?

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Its just another day

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Police quoted the mother as saying she killed her son because she was stressed out

I bet the father wishes he took the son fishing. Maybe that would have made all the difference. A bit of Father son time. Give nutbag J mum a chance to let off steam.

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this country has been going right down the crapper recently

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Believe me incidents like these are the furthest things from the minds of Aso and his gang of old cronies. No intervention on the horizon.

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The population is going to decline much more rapidly than they expect given all these murders!

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BlackFlag,

The facts are that Japans media has not always been this open and we still see very little in the media about what really goes on here as it is controlled by corporations. Now there is more publicity, but not full and democratic publicity about the things that have been going on in Japan for centuries. This is not a utopia. It is just as bad and corrupt and as dangerous as any other first world country. Its just that the media does not yet enjoy the same freedoms as their western counterparts. If we do some research we can learn that these crimes have been happening in Japan both during and before the economical miracle. There is nothing new here. Dare to dig a little deeper and learn for ourselves about Japan.

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Hmm. 40 y/o mom. 11 y/o boy. It would be interesting to see what the mom/child murder statistics are sorted by age of the mother at the time of birth of the murdered kid. I think there might be a correlation between how much the kid was desired as a natural response to a loving relationship (vs. get pregnant to get a husbadn before you expire), and negative likelihood of murder.

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What can you say to the commentthis mother said....very stupid reason. Why didn't she kill herself instead of an innocent child?

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bamboohat, 29 isn't especially old to have a child. I'm not sure where your assumption that she got pregnant so that she could get married before she "expires" came from. At any rate, very young parents with unplanned-for children also face a lot of stress which might lead the unstable among them to abuse or kill their kids. In fact, there are unbalanced people of all ages, so I think your focus on her age misses the mark.

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If 54 kids are strangled every year, one would expect an article of this kind once a week. Under that assumption I would not be surprised with this kind of news all year round. Same with car accidents, suicides, death threats, murders, robberies and so on...

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The weather has changed, so has the preferred 'offing method' from slashing to strangling it seems. Until further updates. Sad.

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maplesugar, actually Bamboohat is right on the mark.

In this country if you are not married with children by 30 parents tell you that you have expired.

And actually parents hound their children to get married just to be rid of them, even in todays world arranged marrage and dating go on, I know of 2 cases myself where parents have arranged for their adult children to go on a date just to try and get them married off.

Age has a real stigma here.

However it does not excuse this mother for doing what she did, Father did you not see any signs here DUMBASS!!!!

I can Imagine while she was strangling him she was thinking (Your father should have taken you fishing) Oh mom was stressed out why didn`t she strangle the father.

Is there any actual parent training in this country?

cuddles

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cuddles2000, while I agree to a certain extent that there is more pressure for people to be married by a certain age here than in some other countries, that attitude is by no means universal. I know plenty of older mothers here who are happily married and happily raising children. I just don't think that we can assume that the age of the mother has any bearing on this case.

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This lady was not stressed she is just a killer plain and simple.

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Four years, tops. That's all she'll get for killing her own child.

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It seems odd that we don't get a comment from the kids father.

Did this surprise him or did he see it comming?

And we are not given an age for his father either (was there a big gap in age between him and his wife?

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And yet, another child dies at the hands of a parent. Good to see the 'one a week' average is holding up. - "Stressed out?" - Let's just simplify it and say, "Insane!" - Sad!

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If 54 kids are strangled every year, one would expect an article of this kind once a week.

I appreciate your sentiments, but the fact is that the opposite would happen. Journalists cannot be bothered to tell the people what is actually happening. If anything is that common, it will get buried. Oddities sell, not the everyday.

I tried to post a statistic showing just how common this is in America (very), but it was not allowed. Again, I cite a lack of journalistic responsibility in keeping the people educated. Well, you all know how to use a search engine, so find those statistics yourself. --Cirroc

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Now the crazy's are coming down this way,....sad sad day. If you are stressed and want to harm something, harm yourself, don't need to kill your kid.

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Just to prove the point, there was a 3y/o girl beaten to death by her mother in Shizuoka on Sunday. That is three in a fortnight that have been reported and there are probably one or two more that have not become national news. I can't comprehend the insanity of how a person could willfully kill their own child!

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I wonder what is the motive behind that? "Was he a good boy, or did his mother lost her plot?" Time will tell.

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"Police quoted the mother as saying she killed her son because she was stressed out."

"Stressed out" ? Anyone else wanna bet that this becomes the tag line of the year here in Japan ! Sad sad sad state of affairs. Japan has really hit rock bottom. The daily news consists of political gaffes, food scandals, and parents killing their infant children. Shameful !

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This woman was probably mentally ill before she had her son and probably made the situation much worse. Crazy people have children too !!!!

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i am getting stressed from these news items

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The police at least have a suspect, since the mother said she killed the boy. Listen kids, if mother is stressed and dad has gone fishing, get out of the house fast.

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The daily news consists of political gaffes, food scandals, and parents killing their infant children. Shameful !

Well, you know what they say, "No news is good news" or "Bad news is news". But in general, human nature states that society flocks to scandal, gore, death and destruction. It is why home videos depicting streetfights, blood and scandal always hits high ratings on the web.

Fact is, good deeds and feel good stories only hit the local documentaries and commentary and often times never get known to the general public.

It is sad, but true that in most cases, only travesty brings to light the good stuff in the world; as in the case of the Japanese aid worker, Kazuya Ito, who was killed in Afghanistan. He did a lot of good and helped a lot of people in Afghanistan, and thus is the reason why so many Afghanis mourned his death and knew his name. Yet, we didn't know about it until his kidnapping and subsequent murder.

But hey, if you want good daily news, then look no further than the "Lifestyles" section of JT.

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