With Sunday having marked the 17th anniversary of a stabbing rampage in Tokyo's Akihabara district that left seven dead and 10 injured, Tokyo police officer Akihiro Okuda recalls "It was an event that made me think deeply about the lives of surviving victims after the incident."
The stabbing happened shortly after 12:30 p.m. on June 8, 2008. At that time, Okuda, now a superintendent at Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), was playing soccer with his son near his home because the day was a Sunday and he was off work. Upon learning of the incident from a phone call from his boss, he rushed to the MPD's Manseibashi police station, where an investigation headquarters had been set up to cover the rampage.
During the incident, the culprit, Tomohiro Kato, rammed a truck into a holiday pedestrian zone near Akihabara Station, hitting several pedestrians before randomly stabbing others with a knife. Kato's death sentence was finalized by the Supreme Court in February 2015, and he was executed in July 2022.
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