Girl arrested after mother, daughter stabbed in Tokyo's Shibuya

A teenage girl arrested over a random attack with a knife in Tokyo's Shibuya district has said she stabbed two people she came across because she "wanted to get the death penalty," the police said Sunday.

The girl, who was arrested Saturday on the spot on suspicion of attempted murder, has been identified as a 15-year-old junior high school student from Toda, Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo. Her name has been withheld because she is a minor.

The girl is suspected of stabbing a 53-year-old woman and her daughter, 19, from behind at around 7.20pm with a kitchen knife on the street in Maruyama-cho, Shibuya Ward, near Shibuya Station.

The Metropolitan Police Department has seized three small knives the girl was in possession of at the time of the attack.

The mother and daughter suffered serious injuries requiring at least three months to heal, with the daughter sustaining a stab wound to her back more than 10 centimeters deep, the police said.

The girl denied the attack was linked to any trouble at home or school, according to the police, who did not elaborate further on motive. She traveled to the scene of the attack from her home.

A witness had told Kyodo News that when police officers held the girl down, she was crying quietly with knives scattered around her. Wearing pants and a T-shirt with blood on it, the girl "had black hair and looked young," the 28-year-old man said.

(Kyodo)