BREAKING: Stabbing Rampage in Akihabara Kills At Least Six, Injures 12 Others

No anime-equivalent pictures this time, just real life photos.

I just happened to be browsing the Twitter site Summize when I saw Tokyo was a “trending topic” and quickly found out there was a stabbing in the Akihabara district. The incident occurred around lunchtime in central Tokyo when 25-year-old Tomohiro Kato drove a 2-ton rented truck into a crowd of pedestrians, running over three people. He then got out of the vehicle and began to stabbing passersby with a survival knife. Initial reports described Kato as a gang member but those were later found not to be true.

[Coverage: BBC News | NY Times (via AP) | Reuters | CNN | Mainichi (English) | Akibablog (photos) | ize.ne.jp (w/ slideshow) | ANN (w/ updates)]

Photo from iza.ne.jp

The quote that is showing in most of the news reports comes from Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Jiro Akaogi: “The suspect told police that he came to Akihabara to kill people.” “He said he was tired of life. He said he was sick of everything”.

This is a sad incident for all the people involved and it seemed that Mr. Kato had no clear motivation other than he was deeply frustrated and wished to express his anguish through violence against innocent people.

Photo from Flickr user blandname

A few bloggers have already reacted to this:
- Setsuna-san at Full Moe Panic called it “absolute madness”.
- double at Furu Anime Panikku wishes that the “fucktards who enjoying committing such acts” die alone and not drag the rest of the world down into hell with them.

As for myself, I don’t particularly share double’s anger but it’s easy to get caught up in emotion when events like this happen. I have a suspicion that Mr. Kato was seriously depressed, so much so that he felt the only thing he could do was to commit this terrible act. I might have more things to say about this later today and if I do, I’ll post those thoughts but right now, I really need some sleep.

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