The man arrested for the murder of Shinzo Abe believed the former Japanese leader was linked to a religious group that he blamed for his mother’s financial ruin.
Key points:
- Yamagami believed that Abe had promoted a religious group to which his mother made a “large donation”
- He compared the gun he used to shoot Abe to parts bought online and spent months planning the attack.
- Neighbors reveal that he was quiet and reserved
He spent months planning the attack with a homemade weapon, according to local media reports.
Tetsuya Yamagami, an unemployed 41-year-old, was identified by police as the suspect who approached Japan’s longest-serving prime minister from behind and opened fire, an attack that was captured on video.
Lean and bespectacled with shaggy hair, the suspect was seen pulling out onto the road behind Abe, who was standing at an intersection, before unloading two shots from a 16-inch gun wrapped in black tape. He was immediately accosted by police at the scene.
Yamagami was a loner who did not respond when spoken to, according to neighbors who spoke to Reuters. He believed Abe had promoted a religious group to which his mother made a “large donation”, the Kyodo news agency said, citing investigative sources.
He told police his mother went bankrupt over the donation, the Yomiuri newspaper and other outlets reported.
“My mother got involved in a religious group and it bothered me,” Kyodo and others cited him to the police. But police declined to comment on details reported by Japanese media about Yamagami’s motive or preparation.
They also haven’t named the religious group he was allegedly upset with.
Yamagami assembled the weapon from parts bought online, spent months planning the attack and even attending other Abe campaign events, including one a day earlier some 200 kilometers away, local media reported.
He had considered a bomb attack before opting for a weapon, according to public broadcaster NHK.
The suspect told police he made guns by wrapping steel tubes with duct tape, some of them with three, five or six tubes, from parts he bought online, NHK said.
Police found bullet holes in a sign attached to a campaign van near the scene of the shooting and believe they were from Yamagami, police said Saturday.
Videos showed Abe turning towards the shooter after the first shot before collapsing to the ground after the second.
‘It was like I was invisible’
Yamagami lived on the eighth floor of a small apartment building. The ground floor is lined with bars where patrons pay to drink and chat with hostesses. A karaoke bar has closed.
The elevator stops at only three floors, an economical design. Yamagami would have had to get off and walk up a flight of stairs to her apartment.
One of his neighbors, a 69-year-old woman who lived one floor below him, saw him three days before Abe’s murder.
“I said hi but he ignored me. He was just looking down at the ground to the side that wasn’t wearing a mask. He seemed nervous,” the woman, who gave only her surname Nakayama, told Reuters.
“It was like I was invisible. It seemed like something was bothering him.”
A Vietnamese woman who lived two doors down from Yamagami, who identified herself as Mai, said he seemed reserved.
Navy Weapons Experience
A person named Tetsuya Yamagami served in the Maritime Self-Defense Force from 2002 to 2005, a Japanese navy spokesman said, declining to say whether he was the suspected killer, as reported by media.
This Yamagami joined a training unit at Sasebo, a major naval base in the southwest, and was assigned to a destroyer artillery platoon, the spokesman said. She later she was assigned to a training ship in Hiroshima.
“During their service, Self-Defense Force members train with live ammunition once a year. They also do weapon breakdown and maintenance,” a senior Navy official told Reuters.
“But since they’re following orders when they do, it’s hard to believe that they gain enough knowledge to be able to [to] make weapons,” he said. Even army soldiers who serve “for a long time don’t know how to make weapons.”
Some time after leaving the navy, Yamagami signed up with a staffing company and in late 2020 began working at a factory in Kyoto as a forklift operator, the Mainichi newspaper reported.
He had no problems until mid-April, when he missed work without leave and then told his boss he wanted to quit, the newspaper said. He used up his vacation and ended on May 15.
Charging
Reuters/ABC