A Japanese court sentenced a man to death after finding him guilty of murder and other crimes on Thursday for a shocking arson attack at an anime studio in Kyoto, Japan, that killed 36 people.
The Kyoto District Court said it found the defendant, Shinji Aoba, mentally competent to face punishment for the crime and announced his death sentence after a break in a two-part session on Thursday.
Aoba stormed into studio No. 1 Kyoto Animation on July 18, 2019, and burned it. Many of the victims are believed to have died from carbon monoxide poisoning. More than 30 others were burned or seriously injured.
Judge Keisuke Masuda said Aoba wanted to be a novelist but was unsuccessful and so he sought revenge, thinking that Kyoto Animation had stolen a novel he had submitted as part of the company’s competition, according to national television NHK.
An aerial view shows firefighters putting out a fire at the site where a man started the fire after spraying liquid at Kyoto Animation Co.’s three-story studio. in Kyoto, western Japan, on July 18, 2019. REUTERS
NHK also reported that Aoba, who was unemployed and struggling financially after repeatedly changing jobs, had planned a separate attack on a train station in northern Tokyo a month before the arson attack on the animation studio.
Aoba planned the attack after reviewing past criminal cases involving arson, the court said in the ruling, noting that the process showed Aoba had planned the crime and was mentally competent.
“The attack immediately turned the studio into hell and claimed the lives of 36 people, causing them indescribable pain,” the judge said, according to NHK.
Shinji Aoba was sentenced to death after a Japanese court found him guilty of murder and other crimes on Thursday for a shocking arson attack on an anime studio in Kyoto, Japan, that killed 36 people. JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images
Aoba, 45, suffered severe burns and was hospitalized for 10 months before being arrested in May 2020.
He appeared in court in a wheelchair.
Aoba’s defense attorney argued he was mentally unfit to be held criminally responsible.
About 70 people were working inside the studio south of Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital, at the time of the attack.
Police officers gather outside the Kyoto District Court in Kyoto, western Japan, on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2024, ahead of Shinji Aoba’s sentencing hearing. AP
One of the survivors said he saw a black cloud rising from the ground floor, then intense heat came and he jumped from the window of the three-story building gasping for air.
The company, founded in 1981 and better known as KyoAni, makes mega-hit anime series about high school girls, and the studio trains candidates for the craft.
Japanese media described Aoba as a troublemaker who repeatedly changed contract jobs and apartments and got into fights with neighbors.
The fire was Japan’s deadliest since 2001, when a fire in Tokyo’s crowded Kabukicho entertainment district killed 44 people, and was the country’s worst arson case in modern times.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
