KUMAMOTO (TR) – Kumamoto Prefectural Police have located a backpack belonging to a 35-year-old woman found murdered along a road in Kumamoto City earlier this week, reports TV Asahi (Sept. 9).
At around 8:30 a.m. on Monday, the body of Chisato Narahara was found lying face-up in a gutter of a road near Kumamoto University’s Joint Research Center for Human Retrovirus Infection in Chuo Ward.
Narahara was an AIDS researcher at the center. On Wednesday, her backpack was found at the Honjo Campus of the university about 500 meters from where her body was discovered.
According to police, the backpack contained her wallet and laptop computer. Her mobile telephone has not been found.
Police previously said that the results of an autopsy showed that she died from suffocation due to strangulation around the neck.
Narahara was last seen leaving work at around 5:00 p.m. on September 6, the day before her body was found.
Police are treating the case as murder.
