SAITAMA (TR) – Earlier this month, Saitama Prefectural Police sent a 35-year-old man to prosecutors on suspicion of murder.
According to media reports, Yoshihito Mizumoto, a company employee, allegedly used a knife to stab his former girlfriend near the neck area on a road in Koshigaya City on September 30.
Satomi Ishizawa, a 23-year-old company employee, was later confirmed dead.
“Between September of last year and July we were in a relationship. After I pressed her to get back together, I stabbed her when she refused,” Mizumoto was quoted by police.
In looking into the matter, Fuji News Network (Oct. 9) spoke to several persons with knowledge of the matter, including some who were present as the incident unfolded.
“It looked like two lovers”
At just past 9:00 a.m. on September 30, Mizumoto, wielding a knife, ambushed Ishizawa on a road .
Initial calls placed to a dispatch center indicated that “a man and woman are fighting.” However, subsequent callers said that “a woman covered in blood has collapsed.”
One witness said, “A lot of blood was spilling out of the woman’s neck. But a man with a knife in his right hand supported her with his left. It looked like two lovers.”
Another said, “At first I thought he was helping her because he was holding her. There was no sign of him being excited or in a hurry, none at all.”
Ishizawa was in a state of cardiac arrest upon being dispatched to a hospital. She was later confirmed dead.
Married to two women
Upon the arrival of police, Mizumoto uttered the aforementioned statement about her refusal “to get back together again.”
An investigator tells the network the suspect prepared the knife in advance. “This was a planned crime, not a sudden attack,” the source says.
Ishizawa, a resident of Kawaguchi City, worked for a mobile phone sales company located about 150 meters from the scene of the crime.
Mizumoto used to work at the same company. He is currently separated
from one woman to whom he is married while also being married to a second woman. He has several children.
“I thought I’d kill her and die myself”
According to the network, the marriage to the woman with whom he is separated was never officially registered.
“Ishizawa-san knew about the wife and children,” a relative of Mizumoto says about the second wife. “He talked about Ishizawa-san as his ‘person of destiny.’ He seems to have wanted to marry her and divorce his second wife. But [Ishizawa] called it off earlier this year.”
The day before the incident, Mizumoto sent a message to Ishizawa via a social-networking service. “I want to meet,” he wrote. However, she refused.
The next day, Mizumoto drove to the scene by car with the knife inside. After carrying out the crime, he also told police, ‘”I thought I’d kill her and die myself.”