Suspect arrested in Japan after four dead, including two police officers

Police said they arrested a man on Friday who had holed up in his father’s house armed with a gun and knife after he allegedly killed four people, including two police officers, in central Japan.

TV Asahi showed the man, hands on his head, exiting the house and driving towards a police vehicle.

Masanori Aoki, a farmer, was arrested by police on an arrest warrant on suspicion of murder in Nakano, a city in Nagano Prefecture.

Police said earlier that two officers were shot by the suspect when they arrived at the scene after receiving an emergency call that a woman had been stabbed. Officers were apparently without body armor.

The woman and the two police officers were pronounced dead in a hospital. An elderly woman, who was injured but could not be rescued as she was near the suspect, was found dead early Friday, police said.

On Friday, the chairman of the National Public Security Commission, Koichi Tani, confirmed that the suspect had licenses for several hunting and air guns, all duly authorized by the prefectural public security commission.

Tani pointed out that the suspect’s license renewals were properly processed.

Residents have been told by authorities to stay indoors in the semi-rural area around the town of Nakano in the Nagano region, where the attack took place.

Craft guns and craft bombs

Japan was rocked in July last year when former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead in broad daylight with an apparently homemade weapon.

Abe’s accused assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, allegedly targeted the politician because of his ties to the Unification Church.

And last month a man was arrested for allegedly throwing a pipe bomb-like explosive at current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida while campaigning in the western city of Wakayama.

Kishida is unharmed and a man arrested at the scene will undergo a three-month psychiatric examination, a regional court heard this week.