The mass murderer of Ikeda Elementary School, who stabbed
8 first- and second-grade students to death and wounded 15 others.
Born in 1964, Takuma dropped out
of high school and was disowned by his father.
He entered the Japan Air Self Defense Force (Koukuujieitai).
but was soon discharged due to undisclosed problems.
He moved to Ikeda and found work as a bus and garbage truck driver.
He was described by coworkers
as a quiet and unremarkable man, but a bit of a loner who
did not like dealing with customers and preferred
working alone. However, after assaulting a
passenger over the smell of their perfume in 1998, he was fired and
got a new job as maintenance man at Itami Elementary School,
6 kilometers away from
Ikeda. In October of the same year, he was arrested on suspicion
of assaulting his former wife.
On March 3, 1999, he dissolved some of his own drugs
into the tea served in the
teachers' room, sending 4 people to the hospital. He was arrested as
a suspect
and packed off to a psychiatric hospital, where he was diagnosed
with schizophrenia, but after one month's
treatment was judged to be "capable of taking care of himself" and
released.
The assessment proved to be overly optimistic. Takuma was
in and out of the hospital. In November 1999, he was arrested on
suspicion of entering into a private home, but charges were dropped.
He managed to get a job as a
taxi driver in September 2000, but was fired on October 16th
after he assaulted a hotel bellboy in Osaka and broke his nose.
He was also kicked out of several apartments for,
among other things, throwing his garbage out from the balcony.
On May 23, 2001, he was again committed to the hospital, but
he left after one day and did not return.
On June 8, 2001, the day of his court
hearing for the bellboy assault case,
he intentionally
took a 10x overdose of his psychiatric drugs and
went on a
murderous rampage in the Ikeda Elementary School.
He was described
as being in an extremely confused state when arrested, at first
repeating "I went to the elementary school", and then
saying "I went to the train station and stabbed 100 people
with my knife.
I did not go to the elementary school." Later, when interrogated,
he stated:
Nani-mo ka-mo iya ni natta. Nankai mo jisatsu shiyou to hakatta
ga shi ni kirenakatta. Shougakkou wo abarera tsukamatte shikei ni shite
ga hoshii.
"Anything and everything has become unbearable. Time and time again
I tried kill myself but I could not do it. I figured that if I
went on a rampage in the elementary school, I would be arrested
and get the death sentence."
At time of writing, Takuma remains incarcerated pending trial.
Perversely enough, Takuma Mamoru means "protect the home".
(Yes, the first kanji in Takuma is the same as in otaku.)
Collected and translated
from various Japanese media sources.