Swimming instructor shot dead, 8 wounded in shotgun attack at Sasebo sports club

A female swimming instructor died and a man was in critical condition Friday after an unidentified gunman randomly fired a shotgun inside a sports club in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, police said.

A total of eight people were taken to hospital, including the 26-year-old woman identified as Mai Kuramoto and the 30-year-old man, police said. Among the injured were two girls aged 9 and 10 who suffered light wounds to the legs. The gunman wearing a camouflage suit fled from Sports Club Renaissance Sasebo after the incident that took place at around 7:10 p.m.

Police offer Y3 million reward for killer of Setagaya family of four

Police on Friday offered a 3 million yen reward for information leading to the arrest of the killer of a family of four in Setagaya. On Dec 31, 2000, Mikio Miyazawa, 44, his wife Yasuko, 41, daughter Niina, 8, and son Rei, 6, were stabbed to death in their home.
Tokyo Metropolitan Police investigators remain stumped, despite fingerprints left by the perpetrator and a wealth of other forensic evidence at the crime scene, as the killer apparently lingered in the house for several hours after committing the grisly crimes, eating ice cream and surfing the web on his victim's personal computer.

Fukushima teen went to karaoke after killing mother

An arrested 17-year-old boy has told police he went to a karaoke shop after killing his mother last week at an apartment in Fukushima Prefecture, investigative sources said Sunday. Police are examining security-camera images provided by the karaoke shop to uncover his behavior before he turned himself in with the mother's severed head after the suspected murder in the city of Aizuwakamatsu, the sources said.

According to investigations so far, the teen is suspected of killing his mother with a knife around 1:30 a.m. last Tuesday and cutting her head and right arm with a saw. He is then believed to have changed his clothing, gone to the karaoke shop on a bicycle, moved to an Internet cafe and stayed there mainly listening music DVDs for about two hours from around 5 a.m. that day before going to the police station by taxi. He is believed to have carried the severed head in a school shoulder bag the whole time.