Japan man sentenced to death over rare shooting, stabbing murders

A Japanese man was sentenced to death for the murder of four people, including two police officers, in a rare shooting and stabbing rampage two years ago, a court said Tuesday.

Japan has one of the world's lowest murder rates and some of the toughest gun laws, and there are few instances of violent crime.

Masanori Aoki, 34, was detained by police in May 2023 after stabbing two women in his rural neighbourhood in the central region of Nagano and fatally shooting two police officers who arrived at the scene.

A court official told AFP that presiding judge Masashi Sakata "handed down the death penalty".

The judge told the court that "this heinous crime, which took the lives of four precious souls, warrants no leniency and deserves the strongest condemnation", according to public broadcaster NHK.

Prosecutors had demanded the death penalty. They said Aoki had mistakenly believed the two women were calling him a "loner", Mainichi Shimbun daily reported.

His lawyer, meanwhile, had argued that Aoki should be spared the death penalty on the grounds of diminished mental capacity.

Following the 2023 attack, a local man who saw a woman escaping from a man with a large knife called emergency services, while neighbours tried to resuscitate her.

The officers were inside a patrol car when the attacker placed a hunting gun against a window of the vehicle and fired twice, NHK reported at the time.

Aoki was arrested after barricading himself inside a house, with his mother and aunt also on the premises.

Japan and the United States are the only two G7 countries to still use capital punishment, and there is strong support for the practice among the Japanese public, surveys show. 

AFP