Police in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, on Tuesday arrested a 21-year-old woman on suspicion of murder after she stuffed a towel in her 90-year-old grandmother’s mouth, causing her to suffocate to death.
According to police, Akane Matsubara, who works as a kindergarten teacher, called 110 at around 7 a.m. and said she had killed her grandmother, Sankei Shimbun reported. Police rushed to the house in Suma Ward and found the grandmother, Aiko Matsubara, lying unconscious in the living room with a small wet towel protruding from her mouth. She was taken to hospital where she was pronounced dead.
Police initially arrested Matsubara on suspicion of attempted murder but upgraded the charge to murder.
Police quoted Matsubara as saying she was using the towel to clean her grandmother when she started getting upset, so she stuffed the towel into her mouth.
Matsubara and her grandmother lived by themselves.
© Japan Today
16 Comments
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Chip Star
Tragic. I wonder if these kinds of things would happen less if Jaoanese people felt they could express their feeling more easily instead of keeping them in until the person snaps.
kurisupisu
Death by wet towel-horrendous!
Vince Black
She could have even asked the woman to do it. Who knows. But something terribly wrong with the family unit in Japan
Meiyouwenti
The young woman must have been stressed out and tired of taking care of her bedridden grandmother. Tragic.
Chip Star
There is no indication the grandmother was bedridden.
stormcrow
It's too gruesome to imagine a 21 year old granddaughter doing that to her own 90 year old grandmother.
602miko
So young, why she did that? Her grandmother already old, but this girl still have good future.
Do the hustle
Oh, what an utter tragedy! It’s so unlike Japan to see so many family murders in the same week. My count is five so far this week. The stresses of looking after an ailing parent are immense, especially when you get no assistance from the government who are happy to take 50% of your salary for taxes. I’d guess that around one in three adults over 40 are stuck being full time carers for an ailing relative. I know many adults in this situation and they are just waiting for the relative to die so they can get their lives back. There are many women who have become full time carers for their parents in-law. That must be very tough.
Bugle Boy of Company B
It would have been easy to avoid the murder charge by taking the towel out.
fds
its either that, dementia/alzheimer's or both? all speculation but the grandmother was getting up set by her grand daughter giving her a sponge bath which indicates that she couldn't take care of herself and possibly didn't recognize the grand daughter. tragic but understandable, not uncommon for a primary caregiver to snap. the question is whether there is anyplace she could have asked for help before it got to this point.
rgcivilian1
I love you too Grandma, here's a towel eat..open wide...
Concerned Citizen
This is just horrendous and very sad.
Obviously the the young woman got overwhelmed by the difficulty of caring for her grandma. Maybe there were other pressures as well. Work? Money? Time? No social life? I wonder why she live alone with grandma and seems to be the sole carer? If so, that's a huge ask of a young woman. Still, whatever pressure she was under, murdering her grandma is a horrible thing to do. And it won't relieve her of any pressure. First it means years in jail, then a lifetime of guilt. She's ended grandma's life in a terrible way and ruined her own as well,
Poor Japanese. So many of them have difficulty handling emotional stress.
nakanoguy01
yes, because we know how insanely low the murder rate is in countries whose people are allowed to express their feelings.
Chip Star
I'm sorry that I didn't spell out in crayon I was referring to familicide. Next time I will be sure to connect the dots in magic marker for you.
Sceptical
Bugle Boy of Company BToday 08:26 am JST
It would have been easy to avoid the murder charge by taking the towel out.
Still it is murder! The grand daughter must have been stressed out but not a hardened criminal. She must have realized the consequences of her actions after her feelings pacified. Death by suffocation is a gruesome scene, seeing that on her grandmother's will stay on her conscience till the day she dies.