Death of 5-year-old shines light on Japan’s troubling murder-suicide crisis

A five-year-old boy was found dead in a car near Tokyo on Saturday, alongside his unconscious father and older brother, in what police suspect to be an attempted murder-suicide.

According to the police report, a store employee alerted authorities in Saitama Prefecture’s Kumagaya City at around 1pm after noticing the boys slumped over in the car.

Emergency services declared the younger boy dead on the spot, while his 30-year-old father and older brother, said to be under 10, were rushed to hospital with critical injuries.

Police later determined that the father had trapped his children in the vehicle with lit charcoal briquettes, leading to carbon monoxide poisoning. Investigators plan to question the man once he regains consciousness.

Experts believe that this incident, and others like it, are part of a troubling pattern of domestic violence and mental health crises in Japan, with murder-suicides becoming increasingly common.

Research from the Mainichi newspaper, based on media reports collected between 2018 and 2022, showed at least 254 cases of family murder-suicides were reported in the country, claiming 486 lives. In the majority of cases, a parent killed their child before ending their own life. Other cases involved couples, siblings, or elderly family members.

  

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