まゆの部屋

Girl stabbed to death at cram school
The Yomiuri Shimbun

A 12-year-old primary school girl was stabbed to death by a part-time cram school teacher after he had made the other students leave the room in the school in Uji, Kyoto Prefecture, on Saturday morning, police said.

The teacher called the police from his cell phone at around 9 a.m. and was arrested on the spot.

According to the police, arrested was Yu Hagino, 23, who had taught part-time at Kyoshin Co.'s Uji Shinmei cram school and is a student at Doshisha University's Faculty of Law. He is being questioned about the death of Sayano Horimoto, a sixth-grade student at Shinmei Primary School in the city.

According to the vice principal of the girl's primary school, she had transferred from a school in Tokyo in April.

Soon after his call to the police, ambulance crews that were dispatched by the city's firefighting headquarters found the girl lying on the floor, bleeding from the neck. She was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at hospital.

Although the police arrested Hagino on suspicion of attempted murder at first, they switched the allegations to murder and are investigating the motive.

He had frequently argued with the girl, according to the branch school.

According to the police, Hagino is alleged to have stabbed Horimoto several times in the neck and face with a cooking knife with a 17-centimeter blade. Investigators found two knives and a hammer in a classroom of the branch school located on the second floor of the building in Uji. They learned Hagino had brought them to the school that morning.

Hagino admitted to the allegations, saying, "I argued with Sayano and stabbed her with a kitchen knife."

According to the police, on the day, students at Kyoshin schools were scheduled to take practice tests for those preparing for middle school entrance examinations.

At the Uji Shinmei branch school, 13 students, including Horimoto, were supposed to take the tests at 9 a.m. Before the tests began, Hagino moved the class' 12 students except Horimoto, who did not take Japanese, to another classroom, telling them that he wanted to take a survey. Hagino told Horimoto to remain in her seat and stabbed her, the police said.

According to a Kyoshin spokesman, Horimoto told people around her that she did not want to take the Japanese class given by Hagino and stopped attending it at the beginning of this month.

Hagino entered Doshisha University's Faculty of Law in April 2001.

On June 26, 2003, he was arrested on suspicion of aggravated theft.

In this case, he was spotted by a security guard attempting to steal a wallet from a bag on a chair in the university library at the Kamigyo Ward campus, Kyoto. When the guard attempted to apprehend him, Hagino struggled with him and injured him. As a result, Hagino was suspended from school from Oct. 1, 2003, to March 31 this year. He began teaching part-time at Kyoshin's Uji Shinmei branch school in November 2003.

He was originally assigned to watch the practice tests on Saturday. The school management, however, switched the work to a colleague because of the bad relationship between the two.

(Dec. 11, 2005)