AICHI (TR) – Aichi Prefectural Police arrested a man in the town of Minamichita on Sunday for allegedly helping his mother commit suicide at sea in what was supposed to be a double suicide.
Hayato Kawahara, 30, who was arrested on suspicion of assisting with suicide, admitted he waded into the ocean from a beach with his mother, Katsuko, 58, and helped her commit suicide at around 1:20 a.m., the Asahi Shimbun reports (September 25).
“I couldn’t go through with killing myself, so I returned to shore,” Kawahara was quoted as telling officers from the Handa Police Station.
“My mother’s health wasn’t good,” Kawahara was quoted by Nippon News Network as telling police. “We were struggling finance-wise.”
Kawahara pretended to discover his mother’s body and had a nearby fisherman make an emergency call about 20 minutes later, police said.
Police quoted Kawahara as saying that he and his mother were staying at a hotel in Nagoya since late August, and before that lived in an apartment residence in Aichi Prefecture.
