Nagano, Japan, Kyodo - The suspect in the shooting and stabbing attacks in central Japan that left four people dead asked his mother to shoot him during an hours-long standoff at his home, an investigator said Monday.
Masanori Aoki, 31, surrendered after holing up for about 12 hours following the attacks on Thursday afternoon, and was arrested for the alleged fatal shooting of a policeman with a hunting rifle.
During the standoff, Aoki, the son of a local assembly member who resigned after the incident, said he had a suicide but could not go through with it, so he handed a gun to his mother and asked her to shoot him.
The mother took the gun and ran away and placed it on a road near the home in Nakano, Nagano Prefecture.
Since 2015, the suspect has owned and renewed licenses for four hunting firearms, including shotguns and air guns. Aoki is believed to have stabbed two local women and returned to his home nearby, where he went out again with a hunting gun.
He then shot at the driver's side of a police car that arrived following a report about a stabbing, resulting in the deaths of the two policemen - Yoshiki Tamai, 46, and Takuo Ikeuchi, 61. One of the victims of the attack, Yasuko Takeuchi, 70, was found collapsed about 50 meters from Aoki's home, while the other, Yukie Murakami, 66, was stabbed from behind.
Aoki has been accused of telling investigators that the women said bad things about me. After a 12-hour standoff, Aoki was eventually persuaded by police and his father to give up and came out of the house in the early hours of Friday.
Aoki told investigators that he killed the policemen because he was afraid they would shoot and kill me.