A man dressed as the Joker injures 17 people on a Tokyo train.
A 24-year-old man, the attacker – dressed in a green shirt, blue suit, and purple coat attacked passengers on a Tokyo train line on Sunday evening (on Halloween).
At least 17 people were injured in the attack, including three seriously.
Not all of them were stabbed, and most of the other injuries were not serious. A video posted on social media showed passengers scrambling to escape, some climbing through train windows and others fleeing to other cars, as smoke began to fill the train after the suspect poured a flammable liquid and set it on fire.
The suspected attacker was arrested on the spot, police confirmed. Local media report that the suspect told authorities he “wanted to kill people so he could be sentenced to death.” A witness said he saw the attacker “walking this way, slowly waving a long knife” smeared with blood. “I thought it was a Halloween stunt,” he told the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.
A man in his 60s was left unconscious after being stabbed. It is the second attack involving a knife on a Tokyo train in just under three months.
In August, the day before the Tokyo Olympics closing ceremony, a 36-year-old man stabbed 10 passengers on a commuter train in Tokyo in a random burst of violence. The suspect later told police that he wanted to attack women who looked happy. In 2019, a man carrying two knives attacked a group of schoolgirls waiting at a bus stop outside Tokyo, killing two people and injuring 17 before killing himself.
In 2018, a man killed a passenger and injured two others in a knife attack on a bullet train. In 2016, a former employee at home for the disabled killed 19 people and wounded more than 20. While shooting deaths are rare in Japan, the country has had a series of high-profile knife killings in recent years.
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