Photo: “I thought he was running unsteadily, but then suddenly…” – “Spectacular scene” of 7 injured elementary school students in Nishinari, Osaka.

On Thursday, May 1, ’25, at around 1:30 p.m., a tragic accident occurred on a municipal road in Senbon-chu, Nishinari-ku, Osaka City, when an SUV plowed into a group of elementary school students. Initially, it was thought to be a large-scale accident, but the situation changed drastically when the perpetrator’s statement revealed that he was attempting to commit indiscriminate murder.

The suspect, Yuki Yazawa, 28, an unemployed man from Higashimurayama City, Tokyo, was arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. He told the police, “I hated everything. I hated people who were living without hardship. I drove my car into a person in an attempt to kill him,” he stated. The suspect Yazawa had no familiarity with the area.

An eyewitness told us what he saw at the time of the incident.

The children were bleeding from the head.

The suspect said, “There are many narrow streets in this area, so when a car comes by, bicyclists and pedestrians usually move to the side of the road. However, the car that caused the incident was driving left and right, and suddenly plowed into a line of elementary school children without braking. The children were walking on the side of the elementary school, and I was startled to see that it was aimed right at them.

I immediately ran over to them, but they were bleeding from the head, crying loudly, and in a really terrible situation. The suspect was so stunned that he did not respond when I called out to him, and he was dragged out of the car by a man who was watching over the children going to and from school.

The man who secured Yazawa, 70, is a former Osaka Prefectural Police officer with over 30 years of service, and he used to watch over students going to and from school in the vicinity of the elementary school on a daily basis. Although the scene is in Nishinari-ku, the area is far from Shinsekai and other areas, and is adjacent to Suminoe and Sumiyoshi wards, a residential area that still retains its old townscape.

Suspect’s Footsteps on the Day of the Incident

On April 29, two days before the incident, the suspect Yazawa rented this car at a car rental store near Shin-Osaka Station. He was scheduled to return the car at 8:00 a.m. on May 1, the day of the incident, but he used it without permission, leading to the incident.

The SUV used was a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado. There are various car rental agencies in the Shin-Osaka Station area, but while most of the agencies’ inventory is dominated by compact cars, it is highly likely that the driver went out of his way to specify and rent a Prado. It is believed that he planned to select such a car model with a clear intent to kill.

In addition, as mentioned above, since he did not know the location of the crime scene, he may have arrived at the crime scene by driving around schools scattered around the city in a haphazard manner. Furthermore, it has been newly discovered from security cameras around the crime scene that the suspect did not target children or their parents walking alone, but rather pinpointed elementary school students walking in a group.

The suspect, Yazawa, had been working as a radiology technician, but resigned for his own reasons in late April of this year. The suspect is said to have been mentally unstable, and we hope for the speedy recovery of the children whose bodies and minds have been instilled with fear by this despicable crime.