On Halloween, a Japanese "clown" dressed as a man set fire with a knife, injuring 17 people

Beijing News Express (reporter Hou Wuting) At about 8 p.m. local time on October 31, a man with a knife set fire in the carriage of the Keio Line in Tokyo, Japan, has injured 17 people, one of whom was seriously injured and unconscious. The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, Japan, has arrested a 24-year-old suspect on suspicion of attempted murder and is investigating the details of the case.

Dressed in the "Joker" costume from the Batman series of comics, the man stabbed a 72-year-old passenger in the seat with a knife on the train, then poured out the oil from the lighter and set it on fire, causing a fire in the sixth car of the train.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department said the 72-year-old was seriously injured and the remaining 16 people, including a middle school student, were injured by thick smoke from the fire. After the accident, the train came to an emergency stop and the passengers escaped from the windows.

The Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) quoted witnesses as saying that the man slowly approached the witness in the carriage, holding a large knife with blood in his hand, which was very frightening. In a widely circulated video on social media, the man sits in a subway seat with a knife in his right hand and occasionally raises his trembling left hand to smoke.

According to Kyodo News Agency, the suspect said in an investigation by the police, "I want to kill people, if I can kill more than two people, I can be sentenced to death." In addition, he said, "The work is a failure, and the relationship with friends is not good." Because he admired the Joker character in the popular American comic book "Batman", he wore a "Joker" costume to commit murder this time.

Japan has so far seen several cases of indiscriminate attacks on passengers on public transport. In 2018, there was a knife-wielding incident on the Tokaido Shinkansen train in Kanagawa Prefecture, where 3 people were slashed and 1 of them died. In August this year, 10 people were injured by knife wounds on the Odakyu Electric Railway in Tokyo.

According to the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), in response to these incidents, Japan Railways is stepping up prevention and control measures, such as introducing surveillance cameras and increasing the frequency of patrols, but it is actually very difficult to check passengers' luggage, and it is impossible to completely avoid passengers taking public transportation with knives.

Beijing News reporter Hou Wuting

Edited by Fan Yijing Proofreader Zhao Lin