Chunichi Shimbun Employee Arrested After Throwing Bicycle at Car and Attacking Good Samaritan

“There’s a man throwing a bicycle and harassing other people.”

A call like this came into the police emergency number 110 shortly after 10 p.m. on April 20.

The man arrested on the spot the same day by the Kanagawa Prefectural Police’s Isezaki Station on suspicion of property damage and assault was Ryuichi Fukuda (40), a resident of Minami Ward, Yokohama City. Fukuda is an employee of the Marketing Department in the Sales Bureau at the Tokyo Headquarters of the Chunichi Shimbun. The incident took place on a street in Naka Ward, Yokohama City.

“It seems that around 10 p.m., while walking along the street, Fukuda set his eyes on someone else’s bicycle nearby. He lifted the bicycle and threw it at a parked passenger car. The car’s front passenger door was dented, and the front left section was damaged.

But Fukuda’s actions didn’t stop there. When a man in his 20s who happened to pass by tried to intervene, Fukuda allegedly put the man’s head in a headlock with his left arm. A passerby who witnessed the scene called 110, and Fukuda was arrested on the spot by responding police officers,” said a reporter from a national newspaper’s social affairs department.

“I had been drinking since early afternoon”

 A photographer from this magazine captured images of Fukuda being sent to the prosecutor’s office on April 22. He showed no sign of looking down in shame and calmly got into the police transport vehicle.

After his arrest, Fukuda reportedly gave the following exasperating explanation during police questioning:

“It was a Sunday, and I had been drinking with a friend since early afternoon. I was drunk and don’t remember anything.”

Former Kanagawa Prefectural Police detective and crime journalist Taihei Ogawa offers his analysis:

“He was probably under a lot of stress. When people drink, not only do their true feelings come out, but pent-up frustrations can also manifest in their actions. I’ve interrogated many suspects for property damage in the past, and in most cases, the motive was stress.

But throwing a bicycle at a car and assaulting a passerby clearly crosses the line. It’s not as if this suspect is the only person dealing with stress — everyone, to some extent, lives with it. And especially someone working in the media should have known that if they committed a crime, it would be widely reported.

If the allegations are true, then it’s fair to say this was reckless, irresponsible behavior stemming from poor self-control.”

Chunichi Shimbun’s Tokyo headquarters released a statement saying:

“We take the arrest of our employee very seriously. We are working quickly to confirm the details of the situation and will deal with it appropriately.”