Crime Saitama: 86-year-old shoots at hospital and takes hostages

[thomas]

Ageing Japan: a disgruntled 86-year-old man holding a grudge against a Saitama postal worker shoots at a hospital and then takes hostages at the PO.

Police on Wednesday were looking into the motives of an 86-year-old man who was arrested on suspicion of shooting into a hospital in Saitama Prefecture and holing himself up in a nearby post office with two female hostages the previous day. "I wanted to talk to someone from the post office," suspect Tsuneo Suzuki was quoted as saying, adding that the hostages were taken at random and that he wanted to meet a specific person there. Suzuki said that he had a grudge against the post office and was dissatisfied with the way he was treated after a motorcycle accident involving a post office worker in Saitama Prefecture, where the incident took place, police sources said. The shooting and hostage incident occurred on Tuesday afternoon. Two gunshots were fired at a hospital in Toda, injuring a male doctor in his 40s and a male patient in his 60s. Suzuki then allegedly fled on a motorcycle and barricaded himself inside the post office 1.5 kilometres away in the city of Warabi, taking two female employees hostage. After nearly eight hours, police raided the post office at around 10:20 p.m. and arrested Suzuki for allegedly taking the woman hostage. A gun was recovered from the scene.

Elderly Saitama hostage-taker had ’grudge’ against post office

The 86-year-old man was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of shooting into a hospital in Saitama Prefecture and taking hostages at a post office.

www.japantimes.co.jp

Man arrested after holing up in east Japan post office, 2 injured at hospital - The Mainichi

SAITAMA (Kyodo) -- Police arrested a man who had barricaded himself with a firearm inside a post office near Tokyo on Tuesday, while at a nearby hospi

mainichi.jp

 

[Majestic]

Japan's first case of someone "going postal".
It is a cliche now in the States. Everyone immediately understands the phrase "going postal". Usually it is a case of a disgruntled post office worker going berserk. I think it may be an increasing feature of Japan, where older (usually male) patrons take out their rage and frustration at the modern world, by creating havoc in places where they are/were used to being treated with some deference. I mean, in rural Japan, everyone knows everyone, and I think it was fairly easy for old guys to live their lives and collect their pensions and pay for whatever services they needed. Nowadays, with the ever-increasing reliance on technology and smart phones and passwords and QR codes and 2F identification, etc... older people are at a big disadvantage. I sense some old dudes will snap, and do something completely inappropriate like try to take over a local post office.

 

[Grandpa Frank]

Wonder if the gun was a WWII trophy ?

 

[mdchachi]

That's some genki 86-year-old!

I think "going postal" is from our generation. Probably the post-Columbine generation hasn't heard about violence in post offices or would know this phrase. Their frame of reference would mostly be schools. But no equivalent phrase like "Going Columbine" has entered the zeitgeist.