Father Arrested over Kyoto Boy’s Body Abandonment

Nantan, Kyoto Pref., April 16 (Jiji Press)–Police on Thursday arrested the father of an 11-year-old boy who was found dead in Kyoto Prefecture, western Japan, on suspicion of abandoning his son’s body. The suspect, 37-year-old company employee Yuki Adachi, admitted the charges, saying, “There is no doubt it was my doing,” According to investigative sources, Adachi has also given a statement admitting that he killed his son. More than three weeks after the boy was reported missing, the investigation took a sudden turn, leading to the arrest. The Kyoto prefectural police have set up an investigation headquarters with a staff of 37 officers. They plan to examine the precise circumstances surrounding the abandonment of the body and pursue the motive behind the crime. Adachi allegedly transported and abandoned the body of his son, Yuki Adachi, in a forest area in Nantan, Kyoto, between the morning of March 23 and around 4:45 p.m. on Monday. The son’s name is romanized the same as the father’s, but is written and pronounced differently in Japanese. According to the police and other sources, the body was found on Monday, about 2 kilometers southwest of Sonobe Elementary School in Nantan, the victim’s school. An autopsy did not determine the cause of death. On Wednesday, the police searched the family’s home in Nantan and conducted voluntary questioning of relatives, during which the father acknowledged involvement in abandoning the body, the sources said. The boy was reported missing on March 23. The father had told the police that at around 8 a.m. that day, his son got out of a car driven by him near the school, after which his whereabouts became unknown. The boy was not captured on the school’s security cameras. The police mobilized a cumulative total of roughly 1,000 personnel to search across the city. The boy’s yellow school bag was found by a relative on March 29 in a mountain area roughly 3 kilometers west of the school. On Sunday, sneakers believed to be his were found in a different mountain area about 6 km southwest of the school. When found, the body wore a dark blue fleece, a gray sweatshirt and beige pants, but no shoes. There were no signs the body had been buried or otherwise concealed, and there were no visible external injuries such as cuts or stab wounds, according to the police. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]