Japan: Police arrest suspect in shooting incident

Police said early Friday that they had captured a 31-year-old man armed with a rifle and a knife who had holed up inside a house in central Japan on Thursday. He had allegedly killed four people, including two police officers.

Police detained the man around 4:30 a.m. (1930 GMT) on Friday, about 12 hours after the first call to emergency responders, media said. He was arrested for the suspected murder of one of the police officers, police chief Iwao Koyama said.

The incident occurred in a quiet farming neighborhood near Nakano in Nagano Prefecture.

Witnesses described seeing a man wearing camouflage and a mask stab one woman and later shoot two police officers with what appeared to be a hunting rifle.

TV footage on TBS showed the man with his hands on his head walk out of the house and be ushered into a police vehicle.

Police had not released any details about him before his formal arrest. NHK public television said one of two women who escaped while the suspect was holed up told police that the attacker was her son and that his father was chairman of the city assembly.

Woman stabbed in back

One 72-year-old witness told public broadcaster NHK he had been working at another farm nearby when "a woman came running from the road saying 'help me', and she fell down."

"Behind her came a man wearing camouflage and carrying a large knife, who stabbed her in the back," he said.

Police said the attacker then shot dead two officers who arrived at the scene.

The woman and the two police officers were pronounced dead at a hospital. Another elderly woman who was injured and could not be rescued because she was near the suspect was found dead, NHK said.

During the standoff, police sealed off a 300 meter radius around the house and people in the area were urged to stay home.

"This is a heinous crime that has aroused great fear in the residents of the prefecture and society at large," Koyama said.

Although violent crimes are rare in Japan, which has strict gun control laws, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated last year with a home-made firearm.

zc/msh (AP, Reuters, AFP)