The police in Japan arrested an 86-year-old man who they suspect of being a gunman. The man had locked himself inside a post office with two people he was holding hostage. Before that, he had hurt two people at a hospital.
The police informed CNN that a man was arrested in Warabi, a city near Tokyo, Saitama prefecture, after a long standoff.
Tokyo’s police sent a special team to the post office because a suspect was hiding there and they couldn’t reach two female workers.
According to NHK, neither of the women were hurt in the incident. According to NHK, one woman left the post office about five hours after the incident started, while the other woman managed to escape a few hours later.
The police told CNN that a young woman who was being held captive is now out of danger.
The situation where hostages were taken and a conflict occurred at the post office happened shortly after a shooting at a hospital in a nearby place called Toda. In the shooting incident, a doctor and a male patient were injured.
Police think that the 86-year-old person was part of that earlier event. The police said the shooting happened at 1 o’clock in the afternoon. The suspect escaped from the hospital and went into the post office, which is about 1. 5 kilometers away
Today, Mayor Fumihito Sugawara shared on social media that a man believed to have a gun was trapped inside the post office. He cautioned people to stay away from that place.
On Tuesday, there was a fire in a building near the hospital. Investigators think that the person who shot the gun lived in one of the apartments. According to NHK, nobody got injured in the fire.
There is very little gun violence in Japan. The country has very few incidents of gun crime because it has strict rules about owning guns.
Last year, the former leader of Japan, Shinzo Abe, was killed in Nara city while giving a campaign speech. This was a surprising and upsetting incident for the country.
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86-year-old accused shooter who locked himself in post office detained by Japanese police
