STORY: An extremely rare shooting and stabbing attack in Nakano, a rural town in central Japan, ended on Friday with the deaths of four people.
The suspect who was detained after a 12-hour standoff with police, is the 31-year-old son of the head of Nakano’s city council in Nagano prefecture.
Police responded to reports late Thursday of a man dressed in camouflage stabbing a woman and firing a hunting rifle.
The son then barricaded himself in his father’s house with the gun and shot at police, the crack of rifle fire caught on camera, late at night.
Two police officers were shot and killed.
The woman who was stabbed was pronounced dead after she arrived at a hospital.
Another elderly woman also died after an apparent knife attack.
Local reports say she had been lying on the ground outside her house since Thursday afternoon and police had been unable to get to her.
Few other details were known, including the suspect’s motive. The suspect’s mother and aunt who were in the house with him had escaped safely.
Nagano police chief Iwao Koyama: “This is a heinous crime that has aroused great fear in the residents of the prefecture and society at large.”
Despite the shooting and killing of Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last year, shootings are extremely rare in the country, where gun ownership is tightly controlled, and a tough vetting process exists for anyone who wants to own a gun.
According to the National Public Safety Commission, the suspect had a license for a hunting rifle.
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