Father Served Fresh Warrant over Boy’s Death in Kyoto

Kyoto, May 6 (Jiji Press)–Police on Wednesday served a fresh arrest warrant on a 37-year-old man for allegedly murdering his 11-year-old son, whose body was found in a forest area in Nantan in Kyoto Prefecture, western Japan, in April. The father, who was initially arrested on April 16 on suspicion of abandoning the body of his son, Yuki Adachi, is suspected of murdering the boy in a public restroom in the city, about 2 kilometers from their home, on the morning of March 23. “I killed Yuki by strangling him with both hands,” the suspect said, admitting to the murder charge, according to investigative sources. In a voluntary questioning before his initial arrest, the father said that he got into an argument with his son, got angry at his words and strangled him on impulse, the sources said. The suspect, Yuki Adachi, is the adoptive father of the boy on the family register, according to the Kyoto prefectural police department. The first names of the father and the boy are spelled the same in English but are written and pronounced differently in Japanese. The prefectural police believe there was a problem between the two and are investigating the circumstances. The boy went missing after his mother saw him eating breakfast at their home on the morning of March 23. He was found dead in a forest area about 8 km northeast of his home on April 13. While the cause of death was not initially identified following a forensic autopsy, further investigation revealed that suffocation was suspected. The suspect is alleged to have loaded the body into his car and, before abandoning it in a forest area, temporarily left the body near a mountain close to his home, near the mountain where the boy’s school backpack was found and near the mountain where the shoes the boy was believed to have been wearing were found. Initially, the father told the prefectural police that the boy got out of his car near Sonobe Elementary School, which the child attended, and went missing. But the boy was not seen on the school’s security camera footage. The suspect is believed to have driven to the area near the school but did not drop his son off and went to a public restroom, which is believed to be the scene of the murder. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]