Police Search Home of Deceased Kyoto Boy

Kyoto, April 15 (Jiji Press)–The Kyoto prefectural police on Wednesday launched a search of the home of an 11-year-old boy found dead in a mountainous forest area in the western Japan prefecture earlier this week, on suspicion of body abandonment, informed sources told Jiji Press. Based on the circumstances surrounding the discovery of the body, the police appear to have deemed a compulsory search of the home necessary. They have been proceeding cautiously with the investigation, including questioning relatives. Prefectural police investigators began arriving one after another in investigative vehicles in front of the home from around 7 a.m. Wednesday. They were seen measuring the width of a road on the premises with tape measures and entering a structure believed to be a storage shed. Officers were also observed taking photographs of the garden and trees. A wide area around the site was cordoned off with police lines. The body of Yuki Adachi, a pupil at Sonobe Elementary School in the city of Nantan, Kyoto Prefecture, was found lying face up in the forest area about 2 kilometers southwest of the school around 4:45 p.m. on Monday, according to the police. The body showed no signs of having been buried or otherwise concealed, and no visible injuries, including cuts or stab wounds, were found, they added. Adachi was discovered wearing a dark blue fleece, a gray sweatshirt and beige pants, without shoes. He had been wearing black sneakers when he went missing. According to the police and the city’s board of education, Adachi went missing around 8 a.m. on March 23 after his father dropped him off near the school. His homeroom teacher noticed his absence around 8:30 a.m. but did not immediately contact his guardians, doing so at around 11:50 a.m. The police mobilized a cumulative total of roughly 1,000 personnel to search across the city. The boy’s yellow backpack was found by a relative on March 29 in a mountain area about 3 kilometers west of the school. On Sunday, black sneakers of the same brand he had worn were found at a location in the mountains roughly 6 kilometers southwest of the school. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]