FUKUSHIMA (TR) – A court here last week sentenced a 37-year-old man to five years in prison for aiding in the suicides multiple men and women in their teens and twenties he met on social media, reports Kyodo News (Mar. 6).
On March 6, the Koriyama Branch of the Fukushima District Court sentenced Hiroki Kishinami, from Fukushima City, to the five-year term. The prosecution had sought a six-year sentence.
According to the indictment and other documents, Kishinami approached five men and women, aged in their teens and 20s, who wanted to commit suicide via social media between June 2024 and January of following year. “Come and kill yourself,” he wrote to them.
The defendant then assisted four persons to commit suicide — one girl survived — in Yamagata and Fukushima prefectures by providing charcoal briquettes and tents and strangling them. The four died from carbon monoxide poisoning or other causes.
Kishinami also stole money from the victims and had sex with them.
Presiding judge Yoji Shimoyama criticized the defendant’s actions of accepting money and valuables from the victims and engaging in sexual acts with them as “despicable, selfish decisions made to satisfy his desires.”
“Gross disregard for life”
In a previous hearing, the prosecution cited the defendant’s “gross disregard for life.”
In a case in Yamagata, Kishinami kidnapped a teenage girl and assisted her in suicide. During a hearing, he stated, “I’m certain I kidnapped a minor, but I will remain silent about assisting her in suicide.”
In previous hearings, the prosecution cited Kishinami as saying during interrogation, “I can’t understand the mentality of people who try to stop someone from committing suicide. I want to help [a person] die, even if I have to help [them].”
In response to questioning, Kishinami stated, “I feel sorry for what I did. I began to wonder if my thinking was wrong, and my thoughts gradually changed.”
“Victim’s true will”
Kishinami was also accused of theft. The defense argued for innocence regarding the theft of 160,000 yen from a deceased victim’s account, arguing that “the cash card was handed over based on the victim’s true will and with their consent.”
But the court rejected the claim: “The act of a third party unrelated to the heirs withdrawing cash without permission after the account holder’s death is contrary to the will of the financial institution.”
Survived
In the case where the person survived, Kitanami used a car to kidnap a girl on July 1, 2024.
The defendant then used burning charcoal briquettes to assist the girl, then 17, to kill herself through the inhalation of the carbon monoxide in a tent in a mountainous area of Fukushima.
At some point, the defendant had sex with the girl.
However, she later asked that the process be halted and that she be taken back to Koriyama. The girl later reported the incident to the Koriyama Police Station.
Mother’s supervision
In his closing statement, Kishinami himself stated, “I feel sorry for the surviving family members, with the exception of a few.”
The court ruled that the reason for the defendant’s repeated crimes was the hope to receive money or valuables from the victims or, if the victim was a woman, to engage in sexual acts with them.
In handing down the ruling, the court took into consideration the fact that the defendant had no criminal record, that he had expressed remorse in court and that his mother had offered to supervise him in the future.
