crime

Stone thrown at moving Seibu Shinjuku line train; two passengers hurt

24 Comments

Two passengers on a Seibu Shinjuku line train were hurt after a large stone flew through the window on Thursday afternoon, police said. The incident happened at around 4:25 p.m. as the train passed through Tokorozawa in Saitama Prefecture.

According to police, two women passengers, aged 67 and 51, were injured by flying glass as the fist-sized stone smashed through the seventh train car window of the eight-car train. The two women received minor cuts to their faces and hands.

The stone, which weighed around a kilogram, was different from the stones and gravel beside the tracks, leading police to believe that it was deliberately thrown from an area outside the train tracks.

© Compiled from news reports

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

24 Comments
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I recall one incident in NZ where a rock thrown at a car in NZ killed the driver, as well as many incidents involving buses. Let's hope that this kind of thing doesn't catch on here. I'd rather the media have not reported it actually. It seems once the media report something here, it becomes a fad. I sure hope not!

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This is as bad as kids throwing rocks off of highway overpasses.

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"News" like this should never be reported. It really has no bearing on our lives and it just promotes copy-cat crimes.

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People in the New York area are always fascinated when I explain the lack of crime, vandalism , graffiti, etc. related to trains in Japan. I always tell them that those cushy seats (hard plastic is the norm here) in Japan wouldn't last long where we live. Let's hope this an isolated incident.

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I'm happy the ladies didn't lose thier eyes in this incident. I hope the catch the culprit/s and throw the book at them!!...pun inteneded.

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Saitama again.... crime centre of Japan.

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I hope this idiot, or idiots who threw this 1 kg stone get arrested ASAP! A few years back, some US military family kids in Germany thought it would be funny to do something similar on a bridge over the Autobahn and guess, what, really interesting, the heavy stone smashed threw the window of an oncoming car, instantly killing the female passenger, so these horrible nut cases need to be arrested right away. I use this Seibu Shinjuku train, and the last thing I need is a stone flying threw the window and killing my family or me.

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I wrecked my first car, '79 Firebird, because some punks dropped a cinder block from an overpass.

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When I was student teaching, one of my MS kids dropped a block off a bridge and killed a man. These idiots need to be found.

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the stone weighed a kilogram?? im confused....did it weigh a stone or a kg??

and was there a note attached to it? did it say "next stop tokorozawa"?

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the stone weighed a kilogram?? im confused....did it weigh a stone or a kg??

Are you serious?... there is NOTHING to suggest the unit of weight is anything other than around 1kg. A stone is just a small rock. Ok, in British English it's also about 6kgs when talking about weight, but anyone who can throw that well enough would need to be brought onto the olympic shot-put team!

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In case of highway bridges and cars, the stone comes from above.

In case of this train (7th car it said), probably the stone came from the side. To smash a stone of 1kg from some distance to hit a train window hard enough to make such damage needs quite some strength of the person who did it. Maybe a person with baseball experience?

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In the Philippines, railway train windows are "armored" with thick gauge steel mesh to protect against such incidents. However the door windows become the sacrificial lambs. They replace the glass with opaque (metal?) sheets when broken. I hope such incidents in Japan don't become more common. I wonder if it would be better to replace glass windows with polycarbonate sheets?

And 1 kg is actually not that heavy. A large head of cabbage is heavier.

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Chances are it was some under-aged teenaged punks (JHS or HS) which means no punishment as is the law in this country.

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This shouldn't be reported. It will simply lead to copy cats.

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What happens in Saitama should stay in Saitama.

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And 1 kg is actually not that heavy. A large head of cabbage is heavier.

And a grain of sand at 1000KPM can do damage. So what?

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I remember a few years ago when fools were piling gravel on the lines in the Atsugi area. There was real concern that a train could be derailed. Seems that the deranged idiots are at it again.

1kg = 2.2pounds, roughly. If the train was at speed - 200kph? Then F=ma and you're accelerating (well, decellerating) a 1kg mass almost instantly. Somebody do the math. Probably like getting hit with a hammer. That would hurt. The perps deserve to be caned like they do in Singapore.

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Unless the ladies were sitting in the driver's seat, the speed of the train would be almost irrelevant. A rock thrown at one of the passenger car windows has almost no train speed added to it. The train's vector was probably almost perpendicular to the rock's vector.

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You do not need to be a rocket scientist to know that if you are in a train, etc..get smashed in the face with a rock (do not want to confuse our British amigos here) that weighs around 1 kilogram, that you are going to be in a world of trouble! E=MC2??

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electric2004 - Maybe a person with baseball experience?

Wow! That should narrow down the suspects to 80% of the male population between 6 and 60 years old.

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I'll bet there were a lot of shouts of "Bikkuri!" on that train.

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You do not need to be a rocket scientist to know that if you are in a train, etc..get smashed in the face with a rock (do not want to confuse our British amigos here) that weighs around 1 kilogram, that you are going to be in a world of trouble! E=MC2??

Fortunately for the ladies, your comment has nothing to do with this article. The article clearly states that they received MINOR cuts to their faces and hands from the shattered glass.

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still I find it hard to believe that I person had the strength to break a trains window while the train was in motion. No if they launched the stone using a slingshot or something similar, that would make more sense because it might of had the power to break the window, all in all this smells kinda fishy to me.

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