Kyoto, Oct. 16 (Jiji Press)–Kyoto District Court on Friday found a 59-year-old gang member not guilty of the 2013 murder of the president of “gyoza” dumpling restaurant chain Ohsho Food Service Corp. Presiding Judge Atsushi Nishikawa said that there was “room for reasonable doubt” that the defendant, Yukio Tanaka, carried out the crime at the scene. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence. Tanaka, a high-ranking member of an affiliate of Kudokai, a designated dangerous yakuza group, was indicted for allegedly fatally shooting Takayuki Ohigashi, then 72, in the chest and abdomen in a parking lot outside the company’s headquarters in the western Japan city of Kyoto in the early morning of Dec. 19, 2013. Due to the lack of direct evidence of the defendant’s involvement, the trial focused on circumstantial evidence, such as cigarette butts found near the scene. In Friday’s ruling, the court acknowledged that the cigarette butts belonged to the defendant, but noted that the possibility that a third person had acquired and placed them at the scene could not be ruled out. During the trial, the prosecution argued that there was seemingly a conspirator who was involved in obtaining a gun, and described the shooting as a “carefully prepared, well-planned, and organized crime.” In his final statement, Tanaka said that he was “really not the perpetrator.” END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
