Itcho Ito, mayor of Nagasaki, Japan, died today after being shot twice by a member of an organized crime gang.
The shooting was rare in a country where handguns are strictly banned and only five politicians are known to have been killed since World War II.
Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito, 61, was shot twice in the back at point-blank range outside a train station yesterday evening by Tetsuya Shiroo, a member of a gang affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan’s largest crime syndicate, Nagasaki police spokesman Toshiyuki Kanzaki said. Shiroo was arrested last night and admitted to shooting Ito, Kanzaki said. He has been charged with murder and police are investigating his motive.
Itcho Ito, who was running for his fourth term, died at 2:28 a.m. at the Nagasaki University Hospital of Medicine and Dentistry. He is the second mayor of the city to be shot, following the 1990 attack on predecessor Hitoshi Motoshima.
The motive for the shooting was unclear, but Shiroo was upset at the city’s handling of a traffic accident four years ago, in which his car was damaged as it passed a public works construction site.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for a “rigorous investigation.”
This murder, which took place in the middle of an election campaign, is a threat to democracy, Abe said early Wednesday. We must eradicate violence firmly.
He was an active figure in the movement against nuclear proliferation, heading a coalition of Japanese cities calling for the elimination of nuclear weapons.
“Mayor Ito had a strong and boundless passion for peace,” said Sunao Tsuboi, leader of a survivors’ group based in Hiroshima, a city also flattened by a U.S. atomic bomb in 1945.
Ito was born in Nagasaki on Aug. 23, 1945. He is survived by his wife and two daughters.
Via : USATODAY.com
