Man Arrested after 2 Stabbed near Fukuoka Dome

Fukuoka, Dec. 15 (Jiji Press)–A 30-year-old man was arrested Monday on suspicion of attempted murder in an incident in which a man and a woman were attacked near the Mizuho PayPay Dome stadium in the southwestern Japan city of Fukuoka. The Fukuoka prefectural police arrested Naoya Yamaguchi, an unemployed man from the prefecture’s Itoshima, for allegedly stabbing the 44-year-old man in the chest with a knife near an elevator hall of the dome’s parking lot around 5 p.m. Sunday. Yamaguchi is also suspected of stabbing the 27-year-old woman in the back inside a commercial facility adjacent to the dome. Neither victim suffered life-threatening injuries. The male victim is a staff member of idol group HKT 48, based in a theater within the commercial facility. He was attacked without warning after telling the suspect to leave the elevator hall, saying that access was restricted to authorized personnel only, according to the police. The woman, a corporate worker from Kurashiki in the western prefecture of Okayama, was visiting an event at the dome. She explained to the police that she did not know the suspect. Yamaguchi has told the police that he stabbed the man trying to kill him, while hinting at his involvement in the attack on the woman. The suspect fled the scene after the incident. But in the small hours of Monday, he made an emergency call to the police from a public telephone at a convenience store in Kasuga, which neighbors the city of Fukuoka, saying, “I saw the man in the incident.” Police rushed to the location and took him into custody. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]