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Okayama cops arrest yakuza in shooting death of rival

Gang member Tadashi Takagi was shot and killed last week in Okayama City
Gang member Tadashi Takagi was shot and killed last week in Okayama City

OKAYAMA (TR) – Okayama Prefectural Police on Sunday arrested a Yamaguchi-gumi member in the shooting death of a rival gangster in Okayama City last week, reports the Sankei Shimbun (June 5).

At around noon, Hideyuki Yamamoto, 32, turned himself over to police in the shooting death of Tadashi Takagi, a 55-year-old executive in the Okayama-based Ikeda-gumi, an affiliate gang of the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumi.

Yamamoto has been charged with murder and violating the Swords and Firearms Control Law.

On the morning of May 31, Takagi was shot in the chest and abdomen in a parking lot of an apartment building, located in the Toyonari area of Minami Ward.

Surveillance footage taken in the area just before the incident showed a young man on a motorbike wearing a helmet that covered his face.

Last year, 13 gangs defected from within the Yamaguchi-gumi to form the Kobe Yamaguchi-gumias a rival syndicate. Since then, a number of shooting and car-ramming incidents involving the two gangs have taken place across the nation.

Police suspect that the shooting of Takagi was also connected to the ongoing dispute between the syndicates.